deep blue - amaiyo - Trigun Stampede (Anime 2023) [Archive of Our Own] (2025)

Chapter 1: your day can always get worse (or weirder)

Chapter Text

Nicholas D. Wolfwood was having a shitty Friday night and he was about at his fucking limit.

“Look, man, I don’t know what to tell you.”

The customer on the other end of the line made a choking noise as if Nick had backhanded him –he was willing to bet that the entitled shit wasn’t used to being brushed off.

Meryl sent him a pitiful side-glance from where she was frantically cleaning stations so they could dip as soon as it hit close.

The man continued to bark insults over the line and Nicholas decided he was over it—it being, well, everything. It was nearing midnight, he hadn’t taken a break since the dinner rush, and it was a fucking pizza for Christ’s sake.

“Just pick the red peppers off and get over yourself,” he grunted before slamming the handset back into the wall receiver. Done and done.

“I love working at Pizza Palace,” he chirped in his sweetest, fakest customer service voice as he passed Meryl, heading for the back door with his carton of cigarettes already in hand.

“Keep it short, we have another delivery order. It’ll be ready in ten,” she called after him.

“No one’s getting anything but a bat to the skull if I don’t get a smoke break,” he hesitated at the door, propping it open with his foot. “Seriously, what is up everyone’s ass today? I swear there’s something in the fucking water.”

Meryl shrugged. “Full moon?”

Nick scoffed and stepped outside.

The mid-summer air was always thick with humidity, even at this hour, but at least it was tolerable. The sky was an off-putting combination of greys and greens. The light pollution was thick with the occasional plane or helicopter dotting by overhead—more of them than stars this far in the city. Sirens wailed off and on from blocks away with the chatter of passersby accompanying the usual city cacophony. A streetlight flickered a few yards away.

One more hour, Nick repeated with every drag. The smoke burned the back of his throat in a way he could only deem therapeutic. He liked feeling his lungs stretch, liked watching the smoke curl upwards till it became unrecognizable among the city smog.

He burned through two cigarettes before deciding he had left Meryl long enough – they were the only two closers right now and Nick definitely wasn’t sending her out alone to make a delivery at this hour.

He wasn’t sure what made him turn back, when he would think of it later. He turned to open the door and even had one foot on the greasy tile before he craned his neck back around to scan the sky one last time, like a man possessed.

Nothing more than a few stars doing their damnedest to peek out in the western sky – and then he saw it.

A streak of something green – or blue? A colour he couldn’t quite name, something both too bright and too fast, tore across the sky north to south and burned out of view. Every hair stood on end as he watched it pass, the heavy sizzle of electricity on his skin and static in his lungs. It felt like fingers crawling up his spine in the dark. It made his stomach tumble.

Jesus. Must have been one hell of a meteor.

Nicholas was barely a foot inside the building when the other shoe dropped: everything shaking and rattling in its spot for a precariously long moment, a terrifying chorus of clanging and clambering as items dropped around him. He barely had the sense to duck back into the doorway to save his own skull.

Nick swore the world had stopped. Surely the world was cracking beneath their feet, the sun was erupting like fire, the world was ending with the same bang it had begun.

But as quickly as reality began to shiver, everything settled. A handful of horrifying moments before the world fell silent again. The building had shivered with the force of a bomb but it had lasted mere seconds.

He stumbled to the front to find Meryl crawling out from under the counter, eyes wide. “The hell was that?”

“I don’t know—I, I think I just saw a meteor? It looked huge. It could have hit,” He offered. The Earth wasn’t exactly new to being pelted with space trash, but Nick had never been on the end of one like that. It almost sounded too ridiculous, too much like a bad sci-fi flick.

A few car alarms were wailing nearby and the late-night crowds out on the street were distractedly watching the sky, but so far nothing else seemed amiss. No fire, no screaming, no legion of the undead. It was the same shitty world it had been before those two cigarettes and streak of light.

Meryl was already fiddling with the store radio, cursing at the old thing churning out static till she found the local news. Nick felt unsettled, untethered—hadn’t he just been arguing with customers over pizza toppings ten minutes ago? He shook his head to clear it like an etch-n-sketch.

A large meteor sailed over Riton just minutes ago – experts say, based on the trajectory, it possibly touched down in the Brise Desert, sending the whole area shaking. There are no predicted showers to occur this month and it is unknown at this time if there is any damage or further debris to follow, so it is recommended that you stay indoors—

Meryl gave him a shaky look over her shoulder. “How big could that thing have been?”

“Stupidly big.”

One of the ovens began screeching, signaling Meryl to come save the over-baked pizza. As she set it to cool and unfolded a delivery box she blew a raspberry, obviously on edge herself.

“What kind of dystopia is this,” she huffed. “A possible city-wide emergency and we still have to deliver pizzas.”

“A fucking scam,” Nicholas agreed. “We should just close up and go home.”

“Roberto would know. Just like he always knows when you take extra smoke breaks.”

“I still say he has the place bugged.”

“There’s extra tin foil in the supply room if you’d like to make a hat,” Meryl snickered.

“Ha ha.”

He swiped the delivery print-out off the counter and scanned the address: all the way out in the dunes, near Brise. It would be an obnoxiously long and boring drive with the added downside of leaving Meryl alone at the shop. Milly was out for two more days.

Nick still felt like his stomach was being pulled out through his knees. The world felt too wide, too weird.

“You gonna be okay here while I run this out?” he asked.

Meryl groaned and tossed her head. “Physically? Probably. Emotionally? Roberto better pay for my therapy.”

“Sorry little lady – I’ll go as quick as I can, I promise.”

“Please please do not get pulled over in my truck, Nick.”

“Whoops, looks like I met my promise quota for the day,” he shrugged.

Meryl shoved him away as Nick went to grab the to-go bag and stuff the order inside. He’d hurry back so they could finish closing as quick as possible and go the fuck home. Nick was completely over today and tomorrow was his day off with Roberto taking his place, his single blessing in twenty-four hours.

“This isn’t a Stephen King novel, I’m sure nothing’s gone sentient and is out for blood, yeah?”

“I hated that truck with the goblin face.” Meryl gave him a half-hearted punch in the kidney and he fake-collapsed, groaning, like the irritating older brother he was. “Be careful, okay?”

“I’ll do my best, but our best changes every day,” he grinned.

“You’re insufferable.”

As he passed the whiteboard they used for scheduling he noticed the little doodles Meryl had added sometime earlier that night: a scowling Nick, a grinning Milly, a tiny Meryl between them holding both their hands, and a mini Roberto giving everyone the finger.

Nick slung the delivery bag over his shoulder and ruffled Meryl’s undercut before heading out. He had a soft spot, he could admit. Silently. To himself and no one else.

His bike was in the shop after a mysterious hit and run just that morning, so he palmed Meryl’s keys for her beat up old truck and took off, still feeling like all his atoms had been lightly scrambled.

The radio was just an endless droning list of overplayed songs from two years ago and steadily frantic speculations about whatever hunk of space rock had crashed down south of Riton. He really didn’t want to hear anything else about the damned thing. His nerves were still twinging and there was the first spikes of a headache behind his eyes.

He reached out and flicked the radio off.

It was nothing new, nothing interesting, Nick told himself. Some hoard of scientists would dig out a chunk from the asteroid belt in the Brise dunes and the news reels would peter off after a few days. Maybe a highlight reel on New Years Eve as the clock ticked over to ’88 and Nick would sit drunk and alone on his couch, wondering how much of this was worth sloughing through another year. They'd slap pictures of a rock just like every other piece of rock on Earth next to celebrities and people partying in the streets of Ulea. Just another weird moment to jot down and forget as time crawled by.

Everything would settle, his nerves included. He just needed to keep trudging along.

The delivery address was on one of the backroads that ran south-west where all the rich fucks with houses the size of sand-steamers bunkered down from the rest of the city swill. Moreso than their overwhelmingly shitty taste and waste of trust funds, they were notoriously bad tippers.

Nick spent the stupidly long drive wondering if it’d be worth starting a fight over. He had the sneaking suspicion that breaking someone’s nose would feel really cathartic right now.

True to form, the belligerently drunk middle-aged man at the ornate double doors took the boxes from Nick’s hands with barely a slurred thank you before shutting them in his face.

Cheap fuckers.

Ultimately, he decided starting a fist fight with someone who could barely stand was a waste of his time and would be an embarrassing win anyway.

Meryl probably wouldn’t mind if he stress-smoked in her truck so long as he cranked the windows down, and also just didn’t tell her, so he tapped out a fresh cig and took a drag so deep it made even him hack a few times.

The day had been shit from start to finish: fighting with Livio, his bike getting fucked up, overdrawing his account to fix it, and every asshole in the tri-desert area showing up at his minimum wage job with a vendetta.

Nick prayed to whoever would listen that the last few hours of his awful, no good, terrible day would be uneventful. Boring, even.

He even added a please for good measure.

Once his irritation simmered down, Nick could admit the ride back was peaceful. He was far enough out in the desert that the sky had cleared some and the light pollution from Riton was just a haze in the distance. The dunes hilling up on either side and sprawling into the inky black were silent. The air felt crisp in a way that Nick wasn’t familiar with anymore.

He was so lost in the desert wind and stars he almost plowed right through the bright, blurry lump that stumbled onto the road, directly into the path of the truck.

Nick swore and slammed the breaks all the way to the floor, skidding off the side and into the sand as he lost control. The tires kicked up enough to obscure the road behind him and throw grit in his eyes. The first sensation that rose to his consciousness was the distinct, sharp pain of bashing his chest into the steering wheel with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

“What the fuck was that,” Nick wheezed. After a disoriented moment, he kicked the truck door open and stumbled out.

Just barely visible in the dark a few yards back from the truck, the figure of… well, something, was sprawled across the desert road. A few seconds of that eerie desert silence, and then it groaned – guttural, ragged. Distinctly human and distinctly unwell.

Nick swore again and dropped to his knees next to the person, hesitantly tapping at their back—and there it was, that weird electricity again, static on his skin like rain. It made him shiver. He felt nearly sick with it.

The stranger didn’t respond but Nick could feel their body heat against his palm. Their breath was strained but present and Nick took a moment to listen to the rattle of it.

They were in white from head to toe, a body suit stretched tight and a sort of cloak-jacket to match wrapped around them. They were barefoot, too. They shifted, briefly, and Nick tried to calm himself enough to think – they weren’t dead, at least.

“Hey, hey, can you hear me?”

Their appearance was concerning: a mop of blond hair with the tell-tale dark patches of blood, pocked with dust and grit. They looked rough. As if they’d been dragging themselves through the desert. Maybe they had. Nick didn’t see another vehicle or person in sight –where did they even come from?

They groaned again, face scraping against the asphalt as they shifted in the direction of Nick’s voice. They looked to be a man about Nick’s age: a sharp profile, more blood trickling down his brows and the slope of his nose. He made no other acknowledgement of Nick’s presence. He was out cold.

“Alright, yeah – hospital it is.”

Nick knew enough to gather that moving someone with unknown injuries was a dumb idea but what other choice was there? Leaving them out in the desert to possibly bleed out, or go comatose waiting for someone else to stumble across him at 1am? It would take too long to get to a phone back in the city. He would have to take his chances.

The guy was surprisingly solid and a few inches taller than Nicholas himself. It took an embarrassing amount of time trying to get the man’s flopping limbs to balance on his shoulders so he could lug him to the truck. Thankfully he only almost dropped the guy twice.

With the man laid out face-up in the backseat Nick could finally see how pale he was—the ‘probably in trouble’ kind. The ‘get this guy somewhere fast’ kind.

Riton only had one hospital. A sad little thing on the opposite side of the city with a bad reputation—most residents just steered clear and prayed.

The drive took far longer than Nick was comfortable with considering he had a stranger from the desert bleeding in his backseat. Every time he glanced in the rearview mirror the guy seemed paler, bloodier, nearly fucking translucent in his dumb white getup.

Nick hoped it was his own anxiety getting to him.

He pulled to a stop in the hospital lot in record time. When he looked back again the man was half up-right, propped on an elbow and squinting around the truck cab with a look Nick could only describe as dazed.

Nick scrambled out of the cab to try to help the guy onto his feet. For a moment he was pliant, folding his body and shuffling where Nick guided him, till a few residents in their hospital garb trailed by—the guy’s eyes got comically round and he tripped over his own feet trying to dig his heels into the asphalt. He shuffled backwards into the truck and shrunk away from Nick’s hands.

“What? What, come on, you’re hurt we’ve got to get you inside—”

The stranger shook his head. The movement was sharp and strained, obviously in pain. Nick had no idea what happened to him but he knew enough to tell that the man wasn’t alright. He couldn’t just be left to his own devices. Nick had to do something.

“We’re at the hospital. They’ll be able to help you,” Nick murmured—he knew he wasn’t the most comforting person on the planet but at least he could try. He reached for the man a second time, palm up in offering, but just like before he leaned away and shook his head, damn near pouting.

Nicholas rocked back on his heels to rest his head against the open door: the beginnings of his headache were quickly becoming a fucking migraine. Could he force a grown man to the hospital? Considering how much he had struggled just dragging the man a few yards when he was unconscious, it didn’t bode well for him to try to fight him while he was awake.

Why did this overly complicated shit always happen to him?

Nick glanced up. “You really won’t go?”

The man shook his head again, looking apologetic. Fuck.

“You’re bleeding,” Nick pointed out, feeling stupid and irritable. His exhaustion was bone-deep. He wondered if Meryl was starting to worry.

The man glanced down at himself before running his hands down his own face. When his fingers made contact with a patch of blood gone tacky he made a face not dissimilar to an annoyed toddler and began patting at his body—when whatever he was looking for didn’t turn up he seemed to wilt into himself.

“Can I take you somewhere? Or to someone?” Nick tried.

He didn’t know what he could do. The man wasn’t even verbal—what could he do next? Try to drag him into the lobby, kicking and screaming?

The stranger glanced at their surroundings, looking forlorn. Nick could make out his eyes now by the parking lot lights—an electric blue, a shade piercing enough to make Nick squirm. The stranger was far more lucid than he would have assumed of someone with a fresh head injury. He was clearly assessing where he was, eyeing Nick up warily, picking idly at the white and grey glove over his left hand as he turned over something in his mind.

More than anything, the man just looked sad. Lost. Staring at him reminded Nick of growing up in the orphanage, of the years he got separated from Livio. That heavy loneliness that weighed you down with it.

Nick’s head was pounding. He knew he couldn’t—wouldn’t—leave him. So he made an executive decision. Probably a dumb one, but he had already shut the door and clambered back into the driver’s seat before he could triple-guess himself.

First stop was a few blocks down to a payphone that had seen better days. He had been gone a stupidly long amount of time. He needed to let Meryl know he was alive. He found some quarters tucked away in the glove compartment and told the stranger to hang on a few minutes, he needed to call his friend. The guy just politely folded his hands in his lap.

Meryl answered on the third ring and began the usual spiel before Nick cut her off, “Wow that sounds even lamer than we thought it did.”

“Nick? What happened? Where are you?”

“I ran into a bit of a problem. Thankfully, not literally.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

He sighed, “I found this guy out on the road—”

“And you actually stopped?” Meryl yelped. “Do you want to be murdered and robbed, Nick? Because that’s how you get murdered and robbed.”

“I almost hit him with the truck! Was I supposed to leave the guy there?” Nick glanced over his shoulder but couldn’t make out much of the man sitting in the backseat from where he stood.

“Is my truck okay? Nick, I swear—”

“The truck is fine, I said almost! Listen, I gotta get the guy some help. He’s bleeding and disoriented and—”

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I’ll lock up here. Go help your highway con man.”

“Are you sure? I can come by, drop the truck off—”

“No, I’ll call Elizabeth, don’t worry. Just bring the truck by tomorrow.”

“You’re an angel, Mer.”

“You’re pretty tolerable yourself.”

“Call the house when you get home?”

“Of course. Be careful—not that saying that does any good with you.”

“I’ll do my best.”

When Nick got back to the truck the man was standing next to it, frantically studying the western sky and the cityscape—then he turned east and did it again. He all but ignored Nick’s presence.

Nick approached slowly, like cornering a frightened animal. “Are you looking for something?”

The man kept studying the buildings and streets lights, looking terribly confused. When he turned to Nick he opened his mouth as if he was going to answer, but all that came out was a terrible, dry croak that sounded as if he had been stuck out in the dunes for days.

Even he seemed surprised. He brought one hand to his throat, pressing his fingertips to where the tendon strained against his pale skin, and tried a second time. The noise was even thinner, and Nick held out his hands to placate the burdened look that crossed his face.

“Don’t overwork yourself, you’ve obviously been through something – let’s just get you patched up first, huh? One thing at a time.”

The man took a deep breath, his shoulders sagging, and let Nick lead him back to the truck. He climbed into the passenger seat with Nick using a hand against his back to steady him. He shrunk away quickly once he was seated, wringing his hands.

He spent the entirety of the ride staring out the windows and watching the city pass with what Nick could only read as increasing alarm, but he didn’t try to speak again. Nick wondered what had him so terrified—had someone done this to him? Was he unsafe?

Nick felt so out of his depth.

The house Nick rented with his brother was quiet and dark, the front drive empty. He wasn’t sure if he was happy Livio had taken that third shift job or not – it might have been easier having his little brother here, but the idea of trying to explain everything to anyone, even Livio, made him feel like collapsing with exhaustion.

The man seemed fine enough to follow Nick to the front door but he hesitated on the porch, taking careful, measured steps and stopping short of the threshold. His eyes were wide—piercingly blue even in the gloom. He looked like he could also collapse any second. Small trails of blood were creeping down his face now—he was still actively bleeding.

Nick didn’t know the first thing about comforting others. He hadn’t exactly had ideal role models during his more tender years. He was often called too gruff, too blasé, and the furrow of his brow and hard set of his jaw was said to be off-putting at best—but he found it easy to soften for this stranger, to slip into a gentler version of himself.

“I know this is really fucking weird, but it’s the only thing I can think to do. You’re still bleeding. You need bandaged up – I’ll probably do a shit job but I figure its better than nothing.” The man was looking at him now from under his dark lashes. It reminded Nick of a terrified puppy, and he took a second to think.

“You can stay out here if you want. I’ll go get my stuff so you don’t need to go in the house.”

The blond hesitated for a long moment, turning some thought over and over in his head, before trailing after Nicholas and quietly shutting the door behind them.

Their supplies were a bit old but they would have to do. Nothing other than the new smokeshop two streets up was open at this hour. He sat the man down on the closed toilet lid and laid out a random assortment of band-aids, bandages, and disinfectant he had scrounged from under the sink.

“Er,” Nick pointed over at the blue shower curtain behind him, “Do you want a shower first?”

The guy gave a disinterested half-shrug before shaking his head and tilting his face away, completely forlorn, so Nick just got to work.

“I’m going to touch your face, alright? Just—don’t bite me or something,” Nick half-joked, earning a wavery quarter-smile in return. He moved slowly, announcing what he was doing and making sure the guy could anticipate everything. The last thing he needed was for him to panic and go postal.

He combed his fingertips through the long blond hair at the top of his undercut—a warmer tone Nick noticed now, like sunshine—just enough to push it back from where it seemed like he’d hit something hard. The strands were a concerning, dewy pool of red.

“This is going to sting,” Nick told him as he grabbed the isopropyl. He tried to wipe away as much of the blood as he could before it would begin to well up again. The injury looked gnarly but didn’t run too deep. Head wounds were notorious bleeders, Nick tried to remind himself. The guy didn’t even flinch, just chewing on the inside of his cheek thoughtfully as Nick bumbled through some basic first aid.

“There,” Nick sat back to admire his work as if he knew what he was doing. The blond looked a little silly with his hair tufted out under the long ace bandage, but it seemed secure enough to keep pressure on the worst of it through the night. “Does anything else hurt?”

The man took a moment to think, then gestured at the scrapes and grazes along his visible hand before tapping at his right shoulder.

Nick dug out a clean cloth and wet it under the sink, but when he handed it to the guy he just sort of held it in his gloved left hand and hung his head—he almost looked grieved, drained. Or maybe Nick was just doing a shit job. That seemed equally as likely.

He obviously wasn’t invested in his own well-being at the moment. “Give it here, Blondie,” Nick murmured, taking the cloth back and kneeling. “I can do it.” He took the man’s wrist in one hand and carefully began cleaning his raw knuckles and dabbing the red skin with disinfectant.

When he glanced up the man was watching, towering over him in their current positions. Now that his mind wasn’t racing quite as fast, Nick noticed the mole under his left eye for the first time—noticed that the man was pretty in an odd, almost ethereal way.

The thought made Nick’s stomach do something uncomfortable.

The bathroom light above the mirror ringed his spikey blond head like a halo—ethereal, yeah Nick thought, a little dazedly. The man’s expression was completely unreadable now, but his eyes were piercingly bright.

Suddenly it all felt far too intimate. Nick squirmed on his knees and ducked his head, determined to finish this quickly.

He worked methodically from knuckles to palm to the thin jut of his wrist—where he noticed the edge of the suit was near nonexistent. It was practically melded into his skin. The delineation between the two was unclear, as if the light patterned suit was part of him.

He ran his thumb along the subtle shift from pale skin to paler suit, questioning, confused at what he was seeing—and suddenly the blond jerked his hand back, hiding it beneath his jacket.

“Alright,” Nick drawled, not quite looking up. His stomach was twisting itself in knots. “Can I see your other hand?”

The man drew his hands closer to his body and shook his head, a sharp little movement—like panic.

Nick awkwardly clambered to his feet. He wasn’t going to fight a grown man. If he wanted to keep his dumb little glove on, then fine. On to the next order of business.

“Do you, uh, wanna take your shirt off?”

The man’s head whipped up and Nick was quick to take a step back, hands up. “So I can check your shoulder!” he clarified.

The man made an odd arc with his hand followed by a sharp gesture, then paused waiting for Nick’s reaction. When Nick said nothing, he did it again but angled his palm towards his injured shoulder. Nick wracked his brain—did he mean he was cut? But before Nick could start sloughing through that idea the guy grabbed Nick’s hand and held it to his shoulder where the ball of his shoulder socket jutted out unnaturally.

“Oh!” Nick side-stepped closer to his injured side as the man pushed the strange cloak-jacket down to expose the shoulder of his suit. The suit was single-piece, the same branching motifs from neck to ankle, and form-fitting in a way that Nick had to actively make sure he kept his eyes at shoulder level. “It’s dislocated?”

The man nodded, gesturing Nick closer and dropping his hand to let Nick feel around the inflamed joint.

“This is gonna hurt, and I’m sure as shit not a doctor, but my brother and I jumped off the roof enough as kids that I know how to at least get it back in. So take some deep breaths, I guess. And, uh, sorry.”

He twisted the man’s arm the way he remembered the half-way house nurse doing a dozen times, rotating it just enough that when he lifted it the pressure forced it back in. It wasn’t the clear and practiced motion it should be but Nick saw the bone shift and disappear back into its socket as the man sucked in a sharp breath through his teeth.

Nick stepped away and his guest began rolling his shoulder in small then wider circles, testing. He seemed happy enough, giving Nick that strange partial-smile again as he cautiously stretched his arm out.

“Can you tell me what happened? How did you end up out there?” Nick tried—but the man seemed to deflate again, his expression shuttering. He shook his head and averted his gaze.

Nick ran a hand through his hair and tried to not be annoyed. He knew he shouldn’t be prying right this second—the man was still bleeding for Christ’s sake—but Nick was uneasy and this spelled trouble. And if someone had done this, if someone was looking for this guy, that could put Livio in harms way just as well.

Regardless of every reason he should, Nick couldn’t bring himself to kick the guy out on the streets just yet. He was bloody and bruised and sad—surely letting him stay one night wasn’t a death sentence.

“Alright, well, how about a meal and a place to sleep for tonight? I’m dead on my feet myself right now. We can figure this all out in the morning.”

The man obediently followed Nick down the hall to the kitchen, bare footsteps nearly silent behind him. Every hair on his body felt on end again. Not particularly in fear just—curiosity. Like the air was charged, bristling.

A quick assessment told Nick he didn’t have much in the way of food right now, unfortunately. His brother was out more often than not and Nick was notorious for replacing meals with a couple of cigarettes. It was just easier to forego proper groceries.

He swiped the box of donuts off the counter as the guy settled heavily into one of the kitchen chairs. He wasn’t quite limping but his gait seemed a little off, a little strained.

“I don’t have much but, I’m pretty sure these aren’t stale,” he turned the box this way and that, looking for a date, before the stranger all but snatched the box from his hands. He was practically sparkling as he pried the thing open. If Nick wasn’t worried about being murdered or this guy dying on his couch overnight, he’d probably find it endearing.

“Have at it,” Nick grunted, watching the guy fish a pastry out and tear into it like he was on the cusp of starvation. “I’ll go set up the couch.”

The man stuffed the rest of the donut in his mouth, cheeks puffed out like a hamster, and pressed his hands together, tipping them in Nick’s direction. Nick decided to interpret it as thanks.

There was a spare blanket in the closet and a second pillow on his own bed that usually just ended up kicked on the floor by morning. The summers in this hellscape were hot enough he figured that would be plenty.

Nicholas jumped and dropped both when the phone rang. The house was silent and he was so on edge he thought for a second his heart was going to stop before he could reach the damn thing.

Meryl sighed heavily on the other side in greeting.

“You make it in?” Nick asked.

“Home, safe and sound.” She confirmed. “Any updates?”

“Dude was pretty roughed up. Had a head injury, dislocated shoulder. He looked like he’d been crawling through the desert.”

“He still at the hospital?”

Nick paused, pressing his back to the wall. Meryl was going to kill him. “Something like that.”

“Well that’s Nico-Code for lying—what happened?” She already sounded exasperated with him.

“He’s here.”

“You don’t seriously mean in your house, do you?” He was quiet a moment too long, and her responding squawk could shatter glass. “You are not serious, Nicholas.”

“I’m a little stuck here! What would you have done?”

“I wouldn’t have stopped driving in the first place and just called it in, idiot! Where is he? What’s he doing?”

“He’s in the kitchen eating the last of Livio’s donuts.”

“What kind of donuts are they,” she shot back.

“Now you’re just being nosy.”

“This is one of the dumbest things you’ve done, and that’s saying a lot. Do you want me to come over? Elizabeth is still up, she can drop me off.”

“No, no, seriously it’s fine. Livio will be home soon. I’ll stay up. Keep an eye on him.”

“What if he tries to hurt you?”

“He’s scrawny. If I can take Marianne I can take this guy, don’t worry.”

“Marianne went easy on you.”

“Okay I don’t think this is the time for this conversation again—everything is fine, I’ll call you in the morning to confirm I survived the night. Go to bed.”

She began to call him any number of potential names he wasn’t fond of before he hung up on her. He loved Meryl to bits but he couldn’t take any more human interaction at the moment. If anyone asked him another question he’d probably scream or fling himself out of a window. Maybe both.

When he got back to the kitchen the guy was finishing off the last donut, fiddling with something at the wrist of his left arm, the gloved one. When Nick walked in he quickly pulled the fabric back down to cover it.

Definitely not weird or foreboding. Great.

Nick grabbed him a glass of water and the guy drained it before Nick even turned around with the bottle of painkillers. He refilled it at the sink for him and watched the blond toss back a couple pills, gulping the entire glass a second time.

When he was done he looked up at Nicholas with his strange blue eyes and smiled. It was a wobbly thing, closed lipped and obviously pained, but it was warm nonetheless. Endearing.

Nick felt that electric charge again, like static settling on his skin, and rubbed his arms uneasily.

When Nick showed him the couch the guy collapsed face-first into the pillow in a way that had to hurt his head, not even bothering with the sheet. He seemed to melt at finally being horizontal.

“Sleep as long as you need,” Nick whispered, feeling kind of stupid. Desert-guy just gave him a thumbs up before letting his arm flop back down to his side.

He was out almost instantly.

Nick was afraid he wouldn’t have the same luxury. His nerves were frayed and the space behind his eyes throbbed angrily. Even if he wanted to sleep he didn’t think he would be able.

He retrieved the bottle of painkillers where he had left it and popped a few himself, then settled down in the living room chair with his new acquaintance in his line of sight. All he could do now was wait for Livio to get back or for the man to wake up, whichever he was blessed with first.

Desert-guy unconsciously chose that moment to start snoring. He sounded like a fucking misused chainsaw.

It was going to be a long night.

Chapter 2: nicholas d. wolfwood's guide to basic communication (an incomplete guide)

Chapter Text

Nick woke with the twittering of birdsong and the living room a far brighter wash of light than he remembered it being.

His recollection of the night before hit him all at once: the man in the desert, the blood, the hospital, the sharp piercing eyes and electricity on his skin.

Nick jolted to full awareness between one panicked heartbeat and another. He had no clue when he had nodded off keeping an eye on the stranger—his memory blanked after getting him to the couch.

A quick scan showed that the couch was empty. Just the vague impression of a blond, weird man left behind in the blanket and pillow.

He can’t believe he fell asleep with a stranger in his house, mere feet away. How fucking stupid.

The front door had been left ajar, early grey-blue sunlight spilling through, and Nick peeked through to find the man sitting on the front step. He was bobbing his head to some imaginary tune and scribbling on a piece of paper laid over a hardback book.

Sighing with relief Nick stepped onto the warm wood of the porch. The wood creaked under his bare feet. “You scared me, blondie,” Nick chided, shuffling closer. He leaned down to see what the man was working on and yawned so wide his jaw cracked.

The guy looked up and smiled wide at Nick’s arrival—a real smile, all teeth and shine. His canines pressed into the soft curve of his lower lip, long enough to be noticeable. His smile was a little too bright, too sharp. Nick averted his gaze to the paper in his new companions’ lap.

It was a sketch. A sphere with a smaller sphere inside, crowded by a myriad of lines and arrows and scribbles—words Nick couldn’t even begin to decipher in arcing, looping boxes and dashes.

There were series of points all around the spheres in varying sizes, creating tiny pictures and intricate outlines.

“What’s all that?” Nick asked, taking a seat next to him. Close enough to see how bright his eyes were in daylight: haunting, lovely.

The man pointed upwards at the weak light of the morning sky.

“Stars?”

He made a so-so gesture, flapping his hand as if encouraging Nick to continue.

“Constellations?” He tried again, stealing another glance at the paper, searching for familiarity in the images. He didn’t find much.

The man bobbed his head excitedly, apparently enthused with Nick understanding something finally. Nick tried not to preen under the attention.

“What are you doing all that for?” Nick leaned further over the strangers’ side to peer at the intricate 3D mapping. He must have been awake and working for a while. “How do you even remember all that?”

The man opened his mouth and some sort of sound came out, though Nick was loathe to call it any sound he knew: it wasn’t the exhausted rasp from the night before, but a drawn-out, trilling sort of sound. Melodic, in a way. The sound looped and curved like his handwriting.

Nick barely startled, so sure he had misheard. It was early. He was coffee and cigarette-less. It happened more often than not, the bane of Livio’s days. Most in his life knew not to attempt a conversation with Nicholas D. Wolfwood before 10am.

“What’d you say?”

The blond’s brows furrowed, and again he made that strange, song-like noise that Nick couldn’t decipher—something so far removed from the English and Spanish he knew that it felt like his auditory processing had just shut down and given up. They didn’t sound like words. The shape of them shifted and wobbled. If he hadn’t watched the man’s mouth he wouldn’t have thought the sound came from him at all.

In the long stretch of Nick’s confused silence the man opened and closed his mouth, gaping at Nick and looking absolutely distraught. He spoke again, the tone of the chirp rising like a question, and Nick could only shake his head.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, unsure what he was apologizing for. The man wilted with a dramatic groan, crumpling into himself and pressing his palms into his eyes.

“So, er—do you not speak English?”

The man made that sharp so-so type of gesture again, still not looking up.

But: “How are you understanding me, then?”

The guy didn’t answer, expression pinched like a man at the end of his rope. Nick didn’t need to understand the intricacies to feel sympathy for his distress.

Feeling a little stupid and embarrassed, Nick clambered to his feet, tapping the man on the shoulder to gesture him to follow. “Alright, c’mon. Food makes everything better. Let’s scrape together some breakfast and then worry about all this.”

A quick assessment of the fridge showed a handful of eggs left. Nick threw them into a pan guiltlessly. It was Livio’s turn to buy groceries anyway.

As Nick attempted to start on their meager breakfast, his new companion made himself a nuisance: sticking to Nick’s side like a leech as he poked and prodded the different dials on the stovetop. Nick had to grab him to stop him from flicking on the gas. He picked up each of the spices Nick pulled from the cabinet and sniffed at them as if he had never seen cayenne before. The black pepper made him sneeze like a kitten and he glared when Nick laughed.

When he started trying to test the metal coils with his bare hand Nick grabbed him again, forcefully shuffling him to the table.

“Nope, sit.” Nick pointed at one of the empty chairs. The man collapsed into it, crossing his arms and pouting.

“If you want something to do, go shower. Here—” Nick left the warming stovetop for a moment to scrounge up a pair of pants and a shirt from his own closet.

Was letting him borrow boxers weird?

Whatever, it was probably fine. Nothing about this situation was fucking normal anyway.

Nick shoved the bundle of clothing paired with a couple towels from the hall closet into the guys’ hands before steering him toward the bathroom.

“Use whatever you want in the shower, I don’t care.”

Nick left him standing in the doorway and went back to scramble as many eggs as he could fit in a pan. He was starving. He had meant to steal some leftovers when he closed at work the night before but, well.

It probably took too long for Nick to notice that the small house was still silent. “You good in there?” Nick called down the hall—the answering thud and squawk more than a bit concerning.

Nick rushed to the still-open bathroom door, spatula in hand, and found the little blond dork on his back on the bathmat. He had one leg tangled in the shower curtain and was endearingly pink in the face. Nick thanked god he had still been dressed.

“I’d ask, but I don’t actually want to know.”

Nick separated his leg from the shower curtain before grabbing him under the arms to heft him to his feet. He was solid under Nick’s hands and Nick quickly decided he wasn’t going to think about that.

As Nicholas turned to leave the guy grabbed his shirt sleeve and tugged on it to get his attention. He was standing way too close, still flushed, and jutting his lower lip out—overall looking pathetic.

“What? Do you not know how to work a shower?”

After a moment of hesitation, the guy timidly shook his head.

Nick didn’t know what to make of that. The house he rented with Livio was nothing new or special, they barely had the money between them for groceries half the time. If this guy was truly that confused, Nick could only assume he had never seen a basic shower before.

Where was this guy from? Antarctica?

“Just,” Nick stuttered, reaching past him to pull the handle. “Pull this for the water and pull this pin up for the shower head.”

The guy jumped when the showerhead sputtered to life and tucked himself to Nick’s back. Nick didn’t know what floored him more: the idea that this grown man genuinely didn’t know how to work the shower or how well he fit against his back curve for curve.

“Have you seriously never seen a shower before?”

The stranger smiled guiltily, still plastered against him, and Nick just pushed him towards the stall with an eyeroll.

“Go. Jesus,” he sighed. He was almost nervous to leave him alone a second time.

Nick used his mindless task of making and plating breakfast to try to think: the man apparently could speak, but it didn’t sound like any language he was aware of. He seemed fascinated and confused by the most mundane things, like the gas stove and spices and bathroom fixtures. All normal things for people to at least have passing knowledge of, by Nick’s measure.

There were a lot of pieces to the puzzle but they were the weirdest fucking shapes he’d seen. He had no idea where to even begin with any of this. He didn’t even know where the guy came from or why he was out alone in the desert so late and bloody.

Nick glanced across the open space where an heirloom cross hung in the living room, “Am I a joke to you?” he muttered.

As Nick was finishing up, he heard the front door creak open and spied his younger brother shuffling in, workbag over one shoulder and looking exhausted.

“Hey,” Livio muttered.

“Hey,” Nick returned, equally quiet. Their argument from the morning before still smarted.

He was hurt, guilty, and confused—but he couldn’t handle all of it at once. He had to compartmentalize, tackle one issue at a time. He felt the stranger in their shower might rank at the top for now.

“Breakfast?” Nick offered.

Livio hesitated, clutched the strap of his bag, then thanked him as he took a seat. A peace offering. The closest they would get till their harsh words lost their teeth.

As Nick sat a plate down for his brother there was a series of thuds from the bathroom, door still cracked, followed by a boyish yelp.

“Why did he leave the door open?” Nick wandered aloud, to no one in particular but himself and whatever god had been toying with him for the last twenty-four years.

“You have someone over?” Livio asked, glancing between Nick and the hallway. Nick chose to ignore the surprise he recognized on his younger brother’s face.

“Sort of,” Nick said. He quickly stuffed a few forkfuls of egg into his mouth to hide his grimace.

They ate in a weird silence, listening to the sound of running water and the accompanying sounds of things being dropped and a grown man slip-sliding around.

When the guy finally emerged from the bathroom he was dressed in Nick’s dark pants and black shirt, but still wearing his dirty jacket and left glove.

Livio took one look at the man and hmm’d. “He’s pretty—”

“Don’t start.”

The man approached the kitchen table wringing his hands, indeed very pretty in Nick’s clothes with his sunshine-blond hair slicked back from his face. His beauty mark was stark in the still-early light.

“Hello,” Livio greeted politely. The man waved back with an unsure smile. He seemed enthusiastic to be acknowledged.

“Those are dirty,” Nick pointed his fork at him. “Throw ‘em in a pile with your other clothes and I’ll wash everything for you.”

The blond man clutched his gloved hand to his chest and frowned. Nick could feel Livio watching him, so he decided not to make a scene and just excused himself to guide the man back to his own room down the hall.

Stuffed a little too far into the back of his closet Nick had a bright red jacket that had always hung too long on him to be comfortable and a pair of black riding gloves that he hadn’t used since Livio gifted him a new pair for Christmas. He fished out the left one and tossed both items to the man that was once again standing a fraction too close. He acted like he was scared Nick would bolt.

He told him he could change in there then left him to his own devices. He tried not to worry too deeply about what he was hiding. People were shy for all sorts of reasons, he supposed.

Livio started in as soon as he sat back down. “He’s not your usual type.”

“I don’t have a type,” Nick argued.

“You do, and it’s not him—but he’s pretty. Crazy blue eyes. I can see why you’d pick him up.”

“Okay, you think his eyes are weird, too?” Nick asked, a bit too animated. For the first time in twelve-hours he felt like maybe he wasn’t completely insane.

His brother gave a half-shrug as he scraped up the last of his breakfast. “Never seen blue eyes like that before,” was all he said.

“He got hurt last night. I don’t know how or any of the details, but he was left out in the desert. He was a total mess and scared shitless so I let him stay here for the night.”

“Sounds safe.”

“Don’t worry,” Nick sighed. “I already heard plenty from Meryl—speaking of, I gotta get her truck back to her before she has to go to work.”

“Well, do it quietly. I’m beat,” Livio rose from his seat and dumped his dishes in the sink. Most days they would sit and talk about their shifts, sharing stories and grievances and laughing till they couldn’t catch their breath. Nick tried not to let Livio’s quick departure sting too badly.

The stranger slipped out of Nick’s room just then, looking like a deer in headlights as both brothers turned to look at him.

“Wake me if there’s any trouble,” Livio added.

“Thanks, Liv.”

Livio gave them both a tight-lipped, awkward smile then retreated to his own room on the opposite side of the house. Nick felt a little like he had been stepped on. Or maybe lightly slapped.

The stranger gave a shy little wave as he watched Livio take his leave and Nick gestured the man to come sit next to him. He placed the plate he had saved down on the table. The guy glanced between the plate and Nick a few times, hesitating for some reason Nick couldn’t begin to fathom.

“Go on. I made it for you, blondie,” Nick said.

The man pointed at Nick and then down at the plate, making a few small gestures that Nick couldn’t quite follow. He made an educated guess.

“Yeah, I made it,” he said slowly—he wasn’t sure where the wires were crossed. Was the guy just now growing weary of him?

The man looked a little flustered for a long moment, biting his lip before picking up his fork and beginning to dive in.

“Remember to chew,” Nick quipped. The guy just side-eyed him, his full-mouthed smile a little mischievous.

That’s new, Nick thought.

“I’m gonna check your head while you eat, that okay?”

The man nodded, barely paying him any mind as he focused on his meal. Nick scooted his chair closer, knees bumping under the table. Nick flinched back, muttering an apology as he adjusted in his seat, and quickly tried to pretend it didn’t happen—that he didn’t feel the static dig into the heart of him just then.

Nick carded his hands through the wet hair, colour dampened to darker gold. The gash had healed significantly overnight, far faster than something that had been pouring so much blood so recently should be. It was still visible and looked like a pain, but the skin had already begun knitting itself back together.

Nick sat back and rested his hands on his knees. “It’s… healed pretty well. You heal fast, I guess.”

The man chewed slowly through his last few forkfuls. The quirk of his brows looked guilty, or maybe just thoughtful.

Nick was so grateful for the phone ringing then, because he didn’t know what the fuck to do with this guy. It felt like accidentally acquiring an exotic pet and realizing it too late.

“You forgot to call,” Meryl greeted.

Nick sighed, feeling guilty. “I didn’t forget—this morning has just been a bit busy. Sorry.”

“Well, good to hear you’re still alive.”

“Glad one of us is.”

“How’s your mystery man?”

“Weird,” Nick peered around towards the kitchen—the man didn’t seem to paying any mind to his conversation, fiddling with the riding glove Nicholas had given him. “There’s something really weird about all this.”

“Are we betting on serial killer or vampire?”

“Neither,” Nick rolled his eyes. “… but I don’t think we can rule out werewolf.”

“I don’t know how you fool anyone into thinking you’re cool.” She scoffed. “You need to either take him to the hospital or to the police station and let someone else handle this.”

“I don’t think I can do that,” he drawled, grimacing.

Meryl groaned. “Fine, you’re a grown man, you can make your own stupid choices. But my eulogy will just be a list of grievances. I’m sure Livio will approve.”

“Bold of you to assume you’d be allowed to speak at my funeral.”

“Bold of you to assume anyone would even go to your funeral.”

“Come get your dumb truck or I’m driving it off a cliff.”

“Elizabeth is getting ready for work. Can we drop by in like, twenty?”

“Yeah, yeah—just don’t make this weird.”

“You’re the one picking up men in the desert at 1am and I’m going to make it weird? You’re the definition of weird.”

Nick dragged his free hand down his face as he heard another clatter from the kitchen. Scratch the exotic pet analogy—it was like having a toddler that could reach all the dangerous shelves. “I’m a model citizen. See you in twenty.”

Meryl laughed in his metaphorical face and hung up.

Nick found the guy scrambling to pick up the microwave plate from the floor. He didn’t seem very dexterous with the leather texture of the glove. When he saw Nick enter he hurriedly snatched it up, stuffed it back in the open microwave, and shut the door just a little too hard to be casual.

He tucked his hands behind his back and smiled, the picture of innocence, before waving to Nick.

“You’re a menace,” was all Nick found in him to say.

The guy deadpanned, tilting his head as if to say really?--then startled and waved his hands, mouth forming a cute little “oh!”.

He mimed something flat, and then scribbling, then gestured widely around them.

“Paper?” Nick tried. The man shook his head and paused—then nodded. Nick pulled out a pad and pen from the table by the phone in the living room and the guy made grabby hands for it.

It really is like having a toddler, Nick thought as he watched the man begin to frantically write. When he handed it back he had drawn a shape that sort of looked like a dinosaur with psoriasis and varicose veins. Nick had to study it for a moment, turning it this way and that. The man pointed at the paper again then made a little trilling sound as he gestured widely again—everything.

“Oh! A map? A map of here?”

The man nodded enthusiastically, his half-dried fluff of hair making him look like a silkie chicken. He brought his hands together, touching his chin, and smiled—pleading.

Alright, the guy’s kind of fucking cute. I hate everything about this. I could be asleep right now.

Nick retrieved the set of state maps from the glove compartment of Livio’s car, spreading the city map flat across the table first and weighing down the edges with some old superhero cups they had kept from the half-way house. The guy disappeared and ran back into the kitchen, sliding on his socks like a dork, and laid out the sketches he had been working on that morning.

He settled down, pencil in hand, and Nick took the seat next to him.

He hated to admit it, but he was interested. He had no clue where any of this was going, but he was willing to see where it ended up.

The stranger pointed down at the floor then the map, saying something that sounded like a note on a piano that lilted upwards, like a question mark.

“Where is… here? Where are we?”

At his strangers’ confirmation Nick began tracing the roads he knew, following the way they snaked through the neighborhood, till he found their street tucked just below downtown.

He tapped the general area. “We’re around here.”

The man nodded, seemingly more to himself than in actual response. Nick had the passing thought that he would pay quite a bit of money to hear what was going on inside that spikey blond head.

After a few moments of thought the man pointed at himself then at the map again. That one was easier, at least.

“Where I found you?”

A big nod and happy little chirp.

Nick pulled out the county map and marked the general city area down for the man watching. He was nearly sandwiched to Nick’s side. He traced a trail down the intercity road out into the Brise, figuring he had been about halfway between the city and where he was dropping off that order. He found where the road slanted south-west as it approached the dunes, the map turning the off-colour of near nothingness to symbolize the Brise, and circled it.

The guy pressed closer, nearly draped over Nick with his chest pressed to Nick’s shoulder as he peered at his work. Multiple people had tried that move before. Nick knew a pass when he saw one: but this guy was all-in on whatever little thoughts were bouncing around behind his big blue eyes.

Nick was surprised to find himself a little annoyed at how the stranger’s attention wasn’t on him. That he couldn’t read him the way he had so quickly understood other people. It was always easy to sus out what other people wanted from him—but this man left him feeling adrift.

The man turned away and began writing away on his own paper, slender fingers tracing the wide spaces between Nick’s circles as he jotted down what seemed to be numbers and that strange, flowing script again.

Suddenly he stood, crossing the kitchen to the calendar Livio had tacked to the wall, and pointed at a few of the boxes.

“It’s the eleventh,” Nick offered—but what did he need the date for?

The guy smiled and returned to Nick’s side, hastily jotting down things that nowhere said “11” or “July”. Just more of that fluid script Nick couldn’t understand.

“What are you writing? I can’t read any of that,” Nick grouched. He never particularly enjoyed being left out of an idea. The blond glanced at him but didn’t offer any sort of sign or gesture as an answer.

A knock came from the front, the Ghost Knock pattern Meryl always used to announce her arrival, and Nick left the man to his paper and mad scrawling, feeling a little frustrated.

“You look like shit,” Meryl greeted. Elizabeth, parked behind Livio’s car on the drive, leaned out the window to wave goodbye to Meryl—then flip Nicholas off before backing out onto the street.

“Always a pleasure, Elizabeth,” he called after her just to see her glare.

Nick stepped aside to let Meryl pass him, taking the opportunity to swipe his carton of cigarettes off the table by the phone.

“Blondie’s in the kitchen. You can keep him company for a minute while I go smoke.”

Nick shut the door behind him as Meryl started to whine.

The nicotine helped the minor tremors in his hands. He hadn’t realized he’d been holding his body so stiff, on edge, waiting for a fight that he was moderately sure wouldn’t come.

The man seemed harmless; Nick was sure. Strange, but harmless. If he was going to hurt him he would have had every opportunity when Nick had dozed off. They were the only two in the house, no one had seen him go home with Nick. He could have ransacked the place, slit Nick’s throat, and bolted before dawn. It made no sense to wait.

Nick couldn’t begin to fathom what he was trying to find out in the desert, though. There was nothing but red dunes and redder mesas for miles. A deadland spotted by small towns and cities too far apart to travel without actual transportation.

There’s no way that guy crossed the Brise on foot. He just couldn’t.

So how the fuck did he get out there? Did someone hurt him and dump him out there to die?

Maybe Meryl was right. Maybe he should have just taken him to the hospital or police station, let him kick and scream. Nick was obviously out of his depth. What use was he to an injured man who didn’t speak any language Nick had ever heard, and who had never seen such cutting-edge technology as a shower knob?

Nick stubbed out his cigarette and returned inside, heart unsure. He felt like he was standing on a precipice—it felt too late to back out.

Meryl was sitting at the kitchen table with his stranger, the two giggling amongst themselves like old friends.

“What’s so funny?”

Meryl had taken his chair next to the guy, so Nick sulkily dropped into the chair opposite.

The man held up the pad of paper as Meryl gestured to it like a cheesy show host. “Look, Nick, he drew you!”

There was a doodle of what was certainly meant to be Nick; shaggy waves of hair shaded dark with eyes to match, expression pinched and frown exaggerated into a perfect arch. The work of a moderately skilled second grader. Nick might have found it endearing if his two guests didn’t burst into a second round of laughter just then.

“Wow, you got the expression exactly right!” Meryl pointed at Nick’s real face, addressing the man who had bent to hide his face in his arms on the tabletop.

“Fuck both of you,” Nick grunted.

“Don’t worry,” Meryl patted the man’s shoulders as they shook. “Nick’s always grumpy in the mornings.”

The man nodded along at her statement as if he agreed. Traitor.

“I’m so glad you two are getting along. Meryl doesn’t have any friends besides me and her roommate so, she really needs this,” Nick simpered, patting Meryl’s hand. She snatched it back and flicked him on the forehead before he could stop her. Damn her reflexes. He’s really off his game today.

Once the group had settled Meryl leaned forward to press her elbows to the tabletop, “You going on a trip?”

“Dunno,” Nick told her honestly before turning his attention to the blond. “Are we?”

The stranger startled a little at being addressed, then gave Nick an absolutely blinding smile: all sharp canines and sunshine. Nick felt some of his frustration melt away, then quickly redouble at the thought.

The man showed Nick the two large areas of the Brise he had circled in Nick’s absence. They were giant swathes of land way beyond the paved roads, both nearly due south—miles from where Nick had picked him up but not totally unfeasible if he had abandoned a vehicle.

“You wanna go there?” Nick guessed.

The man nodded shyly, lacing his fingers together beneath his chin. Please?

“What’s out there?” Meryl asked.

The man paused for a second then mimed a steering wheel.

“Oh,” Meryl suddenly sounded sympathetic, “Did you crash your car out there?”

He made that so-so gesture again, half-shrugging.

“What’s that mean?” Meryl asked, not unkindly.

Nick answered for him, “He means sort of.”

Meryl gave him a too-knowing look. He pointedly ignored it in favour of acknowledging the grateful smile the stranger sent his way.

His eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles like that, Nick thought.

“Well, you two have fun. I have some errands to run before work, so I need to head out.” She turned to address Nick specifically, “Call if you need anything.”

The man waved goodbye enthusiastically. They genuinely seemed to have hit it off. Somehow it made Nick feel lighter, made his chest feel warm.

He walked Meryl to the door and as they stepped onto the porch, she took a little sharp breath which meant she was about to lecture him for something stupid he had done.

“Be careful,” she started, softly over the sound of the street. “He seems sweet—”

“Dumb but sweet,” Nick interjected.

“You realize he’s into you, right?”

Nick rocked back onto his heels and waited for the punch line, the ‘gotcha!’ but it didn’t come. Meryl just kept watching him, calm and collected and patient, waiting for Nick to reboot while Nick felt like a trashed hotel room.

“Oh, you're being serious.”

“Oh,” she shoved at his shoulder. “Don’t act like you haven’t noticed! Just don’t mess with him, he seems like a nice guy going through some shit.”

“He is—a nice guy going through some shit, I mean—but, Mer, it’s weird. He can’t tell me where he’s from or what happened to him last night. I don’t even know his name.”

“He needs to go to the hospital, Nick,” she told him, gentle but firm.

“He won’t go! I tried to take him last night, he totally freaked. You tell me to be careful with him but fuck, the man nearly had a panic attack last night. I can’t force him. Not without breaking his trust, I think,” Nick finished quietly.

Meryl sighed, staring at the closed door as if it had the answers. “I’ll come by after work. We’ll figure it out. There has to be something we can do without traumatizing the poor guy worse.”

“I appreciate you trying to help, really, I just… I’m not sure what we can do. I’m flying by my ass right now.”

“Well, you gave him food and a place to sleep. He’s already doing better than he was laying out in the desert, thanks to you. Keep up the good work, nurse Nico,” she clapped him on the shoulder, trying to suppress a grin. “We’ll figure the rest out.”

Nick gently slapped her hand away and slipped her truck keys into her palm, rolling his eyes. “Get off my porch.”

He watched her clamber into her too-tall truck and back out onto the street and nearly into a neighbor’s car, waving as she sped off. She was truly an awful driver.

Inside, his stranger had migrated to the couch, curled up with his cheek resting on his knees. He looked completely lost in thought with the folded maps clutched in his gloved hand.

“Still wanna go on a fieldtrip to the desert, spikey?”

Nick estimated that the blond was about the same size as his brother, so he let him borrow the hiking boots Livio left by the door. They seemed to be a bit clunky for someone as accident prone as that guy, but the man gave him a thumbs up and waited for Nick to join him at the door.

They slipped into Livio’s car with the keys Nick had swiped from the hook. They shared the car anyway, so he figured his brother wouldn’t mind. Probably. At the very least he’d be conked out for most of the day and not notice anyway. Forgiveness not permission and all that.

As Nick drove the familiar roads the man began pawing through the cassette tapes in the holder between the seats. He carefully picked up each one, running his fingers along the edges and sprockets. Nick reminded him not to pull the tape at the bottom.

He saw the man hesitate on the ZZ Top album—Afterburner. He seemed enamored with the art of the case, turning it this way and that in the sun, tracing the image of the red car-ship tearing through space far longer than he had the others.

Nick held out his hand for it and the stranger gently placed it in his open palm as if he thought it might detonate. Nick popped it into the player and let the tape do its thing.

Nick was delightfully pleased to see the man begin tapping his fingers to the beat on his knees.

The guy caught Nick staring and cast him a shy smile, turning his head as it bobbed along. They let Billy Gibbons fill the space between them and Nick found himself enjoying the time together. It was simple, and he liked seeing his new companion smile. He hadn’t felt so at ease in a long time.

The sun was high overhead as they covered ground through the dunes along the road and finally crest that familiar little hill, just beyond where Nick had found the man the night before. Nick pulled off to the side and let the car idle. He could already feel the sweat beading along his neck and chest, making his skin feel slick. The other man looked completely unbothered.

Nick had the passing thought that he should be regretting this more than he did.

“Alright, you’re the navigator, Spikey. Navigate.” Nick sat back and watched him work.

The blond man unfolded the maps with precise care and took his time scanning the page and the sun in the sky. Eventually he pointed out across the sand in a direction that, to Nick, looked like every other inch of the desolate hellscape.

Nick gave a nervous little sigh and shifted the car to start the trek out over the sand. This was going to suck.

It was slow going to keep enough traction across the shifting surface: it gave his companion plenty of time to stare at the map and adjust their course as they went, nudging Nick by small degrees according to some measure Nick still didn’t understand. Everything looked the same to him, sun bleached and barren, the horizon a too-thin line and the air too sharp in his lungs.

The other man blew a raspberry, still staring at the map as if it might give him more answers. He seemed to be getting worked up, sighing and biting his lip and hanging out the window to scan their surroundings as if he thought there would be something different. Once or twice he pressed his forehead to Nick’s shoulder, a quick little headbutt, and made a sound like an annoyed kitten.

Time crawled by with the sun, the temperature ratcheting up till Nick was sure he was going to die there in his brother’s car next to a pretty, blond stranger. This was it, the culmination of his entire life. He mostly regretted that he was going to give up the ghost in a pool of his own sweat. He supposed there were worse ways to go.

Eventually his new friend said something in that soft, melodic language again and grabbed Nick’s shoulder—Nick took that as his sign to stop. The car settled into the sand and shifted as the man hurried out of the car.

Nick followed him, trying to rush to keep up, but his feet slipped under him in the new terrain with disuse. The other man set a steady pace south. His steps were quick and even. He walked across the moving earth as if he had been raised in it. The air smelled like ozone, static on the back of Nick’s tongue.

“Do you actually know where we’re going, or should I start regretting all my life choices now?” Nick called after his back. The man just gave him a tight-lipped smile over his shoulder and continued marching forward.

He was slipping away from Nick, growing smaller as he pulled ahead, moving with the urgency of something. Nick struggled after him, worrying rising in his spine at the thought of losing him out here under the harsh sun. The sky was so pale it was blinding. The sand seemed to be lifting higher, climbing into a steep hillside that left Nick breathless—

And then at that high point between the sky and sand his companion dropped from sight.

There was a sharp stab of urgency behind Nick’s ribs as he began to call for him. Panic, lucid and quick, spurring him up the dune that felt more like a mountain.

On the other side Nick found the crater by almost stumbling headfirst into it: a deep cavernous thing dug out from the sand, shards of shock glass built from the impact of whatever it was Nick could spy peeking out from its centre. Something green, metallic. It was brighter under the sun than the washed-out skyline and dusted with sand carried by the unpredictable desert wind.

The stranger was already making a mad dash for it. He was halfway down the hardened impact zone of the site, slipping and sliding over his own two feet in his rush, a strange elegance to his fumbling.

Nick did his best to follow, trying to call him back from the thing as he tried not to break his neck. His calls went ignored.

As the man ran right up to the thing, he panicked, “Hey, blondie! Hold on, that could be dangerous!”

Nick watched as the man placed his bare hand to the exposed metal. It was sleek and dark and shining—and lit up under his touch. A circuit of warm light humming to life under his pale hand creating intricate shapes reaching down into the sand, and the outline of an entrance that slid free just for him.

He ran inside and disappeared from view a second time before Nick could grab him, save him. So Nick followed.

The inside was a much larger space than Nick had thought, a sprawling expanse of a room that made his head spin. He wondered how much of it was buried beneath the sand, crunched under the weight of impact. Everything seemed to be made of the same cool metal, sleek and pretty and efficient, but lit by the deep red of emergency lights overhead.

It was silent beneath the hum of what Nick assumed to be power reserves. It made the darkness of the room eerie. The shadows felt too long, too deep.

Something was wrong. The room had the sour tang of iron in the cool air.

The blond opened another door with a keycode too quick for Nick to process and ran further into the gloom. Nick listened to his footsteps fade away, chest tight.

Paralyzed, Nick hovered in the entrance, counting his breaths and feeling his lungs expand with the weight of the strange new air. For a moment he thought he could hear someone else’s breath layered over his own before he realized it was the echo of the metal chamber he stood in, throwing his own presence back to him.

His whole body felt electric. A walking static storm, body pulled tight by the buzz of something he could feel but not see. It made his nerves itch, fray. His knees felt like they might cave under the weight of everything he was feeling. He staggered under the burden—stumbled to the chair just in his peripheral to catch himself on its headrest.

It was facing a wide array of monitors and sensors. Buttons and knobs and dials. All dark, all dead. His own reflection was warped and ghostly. He hated the way it stared.

There was blood on some of the panels—long since dried, turning brown in long rivulets down the sharp edges, along the arms of the chair.

On the right side was a second chair, exactly the same as the one Nicholas clung to.

There was two of them, he thought with a cold wave of dread. Where’s the other, then?

This place had opened to him like welcoming a loved one home. He belonged here, came from here. Something had gone wrong. Was wrong.

Nick knew he needed to leave. He had to go, quickly, before he couldn’t.

He heard him before he saw him: his companion stumbled back through the door he had left through, clinging to the threshold like he couldn’t hold himself up any longer, like he might collapse—and then he did. He hit the floor hard, his knees taking the brunt.

Nick steadied himself and was at his side before he could make the choice. He wrapped his hands around the man’s shoulders, trying to pull him upright or steady him or something, before realizing that his shoulders were shaking: violent tremors that started in his shoulders and shook his whole body like a terrible wave.

The sob that broke through was wounded. A broken heart. Nick was sure it would shatter his own as the sound came again and again, the man curling in on himself till his forehead nearly touched the floor—whatever had kept him pushing through the last twelve hours had cracked right down the middle and left the pieces in Nick’s hands.

Nick gathered him as close as he could at the odd angle and shuffled them to rest against the wall, Nick’s back pressed to the cold metal of this strange place while the stranger pressed his face to Nick’s shirt and made that painful sound again.

There were two of them, he thought a second time. This isn’t a trap. He’s lost someone.

Nick kept one arm steady around the man’s back and used his other hand to draw him closer, to smother the sound in his own skin and feel him shake as if that heartache was shared.

The man in his arms spoke between his cries—the melodic words broken into jagged edges with his grief. Nick felt the unfamiliar sounds like gaping wounds, like the edges of knives.

He let the stranger sob and wail and break his heart, completely unable to tell Nicholas what had caused him such pain. But mourning, tragedy, was universal.

So Nick did what he was able, huddled there on that too cool floor: cradled him close in that unearthly place, soft and patient under the emergency lights red as blood, and tried not to let his own heart shatter with the understanding.

Chapter 3: enjoy the silence

Chapter Text

Nick loses track of time.

There is no clock, no sun or moon, in that dreary place. He doesn’t know when the door shut and trapped them in the red half-light. Days could have passed, or simply the span of a heartbeat. He doesn’t know.

He holds his companion close and his head spins.

The man sobs broken words into Nick’s chest until they peter off into just ragged breaths, a pale attempt at regulation in the face of his distress. He quivers like a snapped cord in Nick’s arms. His chest heaves with the effort of it all, expression a pained grimace he tries to keep tucked away.

Nick passes his fingers through his sweaty blond hair—back and forth, back and forth. A rhythm and a desperate attempt to call him back to Nick.

As time ticks by the cries wane to nothing. They sit in silence, twined together. Nick wonders if the other man can hear his heartbeat where his ear is pressed against it. Can hear it beat double-time, or hear it breaking.

Nick counts his own breaths again.

The man pulls away first—slowly peels his cheek from Nick’s soaked shirt and sits back, avoiding Nick’s eyes. Nick recognizes shame. Regret.

Before Nick can help himself, he cups his companion’s flushed, damp cheek and holds him as steady as he is able.

He waits.

Carefully, the strange man cups Nick’s hand with his own leather-bound one. He holds him fiercely, eyes closed, eyelids fluttering as he thinks. He looks so fragile it steals Nick’s breath.

When the man opens his eyes again Nick feels struck dumb: by the sharpness of the colour, the way he sizes Nick up like a hunter. In the dimness Nick can make out a pattern through his bright blue irises, an intricate weaving of light making them glow. He’s never looked more inhuman.

His beauty is otherworldly. Now, Nick supposes, he knows why.

The man seems to make a decision: he pulls back to glance at the leather glove before shucking it and tossing it aside—revealing more of that gleaming, dark metal that surrounds them. It catches under the emergency light and shines like his eyes.

Next goes the red jacket: the man removes it quickly, boldly, as if he’s afraid of losing his nerve. He tosses the fabric aside in a heap then rolls up the shirt sleeve to put his full arm on display.

It’s a gleaming metal prosthetic from bicep to fingertips, attached with a complicated set of metal fittings embedded into his skin. The area around the connector is deeply scarred, both fresh and old. A section of the blue-green metal extends from his outer bicep to shoulder, like a support structure. The forearm of it is hollowed down to tendons and small whirring mechanisms, clicking against one another as he nervously taps his fingers. A black band with a sleek surface encircles his wrist.

The stranger hesitates, breathes deep, then holds his hand out towards Nick: look.

Nick watches his face: he keeps his gaze adverted, downcast. As if ashamed of his own body.

Without much thought Nick takes the prosthetic hand in his own. It’s freezing to the touch, but the blond man jumps at the contact. Nick wonders if he has sensation, something more than just phantom limb mimicking nerves. Small sections of it are alight like the ship under his touch—full of an energy that seeks out Nick’s own skin.

The man seems to be waiting for something. Waiting on Nick.

“This definitely isn’t the weirdest thing you’ve shown me today, spikey,” he tells him. Perhaps a little too rough—but the man’s eyes cut back to him and he gives Nick that quarter-smile again. The fake one that Nick has decided he doesn’t like.

Neither of them let go even as Nick thinks he might choke on the static in his throat.

“What happened?” he asks, softly. It’s still too loud in the dead silence. “What is all this?”

The guy withdraws his hand and fidgets with that band—a watch? Some more ridiculous, outer-space shit Nick can’t even begin to guess at?

As he tinkers with it something clicks, the sound of springs and metal snapping in place. He looks up again, his expression hauntingly delicate, and murmurs in that honeyed dialect. It’s tentative and Nick’s heart nearly breaks a second time to shake his head, to admit that he cannot bridge that gap between them, and watch his companion hang his head.

Nick wants to hold him again. He squashes the urge, curbs it to simply cupping the curve of a metal elbow instead. The man clasps Nick’s tentative touch closer as he slumps against the wall beside him.

He’s still flushed, Nick thinks. He touches the moon-bright curve of his cheek, tear tracks now tacky, and the skin burns under his fingertips.

Has he cried himself sick? The thought comes easily: Nick recalls his early years at the orphanage, foggy as they might be now as he’s grown into adulthood. The years before Livio. How he would sob and wail himself ill, pleading for something he wasn’t even aware of.

Heartache is a sickness, too.

Nick couldn’t let him stay here in the dark, the tang of blood in the air and ghosts at the helm.

“Let’s go home,” he tells him.

The man barely reacts as Nick redresses him in his jacket and glove. His eyes flutter, the cool blue of them landing on Nick, but his mind seems a thousand miles away. In space, perhaps. His real home, his family.

“C’mon, blondie,” Nick grunts. He wraps the man’s arms around him and hefts them to their feet with more struggle than he’d like to admit. He’s nearly deadweight, clinging to Nick while gravity seems to be dragging him under. His pretty face is lined with exhaustion but he tries to keep pace.

At the entrance, Nick takes the man’s too-warm hand and places it in a spot near the door—then feels his companion laugh against his ear. Goosebumps break across his skin, both too much and too little sensation at once. Nick glares, embarrassed, and the man helpfully shifts his hand a few inches down to a cut of slightly darker metal.

The circuitry lights up a second time and the maw of the ship opens like a yawning beast. Together they stumble into the golden afternoon sun.

The dunes are blinding with it, the sky cornflower blue. They climb out of the impact site with Nick digging his fingers into the glass of it till his nails and palms bleed. The man throwing his weight to balance them as they ascend, both gasping the hot desert air. Sand and glass trail behind them, falling into the pit.

The blond seems barely conscious, his feet dragging as Nick hustles him along. The trek to the car feels twice as long, time slowed by the long tracks they drag in the sand behind them, and Nick feels the fat rivulets of sweat pour down his spine.

Nick helps him into the passenger seat and his head tilts back into the headrest, eyes far away, searching through the dunes.

Nick turns his brother’s ZZ Top album back on, keeping the volume at a low murmur. The man smiles—flushed and grateful, but the drive home is quiet in a way that feels strained.

His stranger teeters between sleep and consciousness, eyes fluttering, and something in Nick feels panicked. It doesn’t seem like just exhaustion. He has the far-gone stare of a man in the throes of fever.

How the fuck do you take care of a sick alien man?

Nick all but carries him to the front door. The pull of sleep is becoming too heavy, apparently. The sky is the cooling gold of late afternoon and Nick feels as if he’s drowning. He struggles with his keys, “Almost there,” he tells the head of blond hair that’s lulled onto his shoulder.

Inside he finds Livio at the kitchen counter making his dinner. He turns, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and startles as he sees Nick dragging the man in behind him.

“Woah,” he rushes forward, taking up the other side. “What happened to him?”

Livio helps them meander into Nick’s room. He’d feel guilty letting a sick and injured man sleep on their ratty old couch two nights in a row.

“You’re gonna have me institutionalized,” Nick grunts. His bones feel like they’re going to grind themselves into dust—he needs some real sleep so fucking badly.

“Try me.”

Together the brothers maneuver the taller man onto Nick’s unmade bed, on top of the covers, and Nick begins untying his borrowed boots. They thunk to the floor as Nick speaks.

“I don’t think he’s human,” he starts—tries to, at least. No point of information feels like a proper starting point.

Livio gestures at the unconscious man, and Nick cuts him off, “I know, but— there’s this thing in the desert. Like a… a ship. A spaceship?”

Livio stares, silver-blond brows furrowed as he thinks. “Are you fucking with me.”

“This is a little elaborate for a prank,” Nick points out, sweeping his hands wide.

“Fair,” Livio concedes. “But you’re telling me, what? That this guy’s a fucking alien? And he took you to his ship? Get real—”

“I would love for this to be so much less real,” Nick groans.

Nick stands, walking around the bed and gently pushing aside the left sleeve of the red jacket, just enough that the rich blue metal of the prosthetic is visible. It’s cold against his fingers—a stark contrast to the burn of his skin just above the silver port that connects the two. Nick’s nerves seem to hum.

“What is that?” Livio leans in, whispering.

“I’m not a fucking scientist but have you ever seen anything like this? It’s his whole arm, down to his fingers. Works like a real arm, and I think he might actually be able to feel with it. And what the hell is this metal? We were out in the Brise for hours, Livio, and it was still cold. Just like the ship. I think it was made of the same stuff.”

Livio presses his fingers to the metal bicep and jerks his hand back—“It shocked me.”

“I’ve been feeling it, too—it happens most when he’s around, or he touches me. I don’t know what it is. And the ship,” Nick sits on the floor, presses his back to the wall for support. “It made me feel sick with that static stuff—I could almost taste it, there was so much. And there was blood—”

“Do you think this guy’s dangerous?” Livio asks, still holding his own hand like he had forgotten.

“No,” Nick answers—knows he’s answered too quickly by Livio’s sharp look. “No, I really don’t. I think he came here with someone. I think he lost whoever it is. Man had a total breakdown when he found the thing. I don’t know who he came here with or what happened to them but, something went wrong. And I don’t think it was this guy’s doing.”

“This isn’t safe,” Livio decides, shaking his head.

“If he was gonna hurt me he would have done it last night,” Nick snaps. “He’s lost, and fucking terrified. We can’t just kick him out now.”

Livio sighs, a burdened sound, as he glances between Nick and the stranger in his bed. But he doesn’t relent. “So, what are you going to do? If… If he’s not human, if he came from somewhere else, how long before someone comes looking for him? Are you just going to let him shack up here indefinitely? You haven’t thought any of this through,” he accuses.

“No,” Nick admits. “No, I haven’t. But I don’t regret helping him. If you were stranded and hurt somewhere alone, I’d hope someone would help you.”

Livio’s mouth pinches, frustrated, but he reels whatever he wants to say back in and sighs again. “I need to get ready for work. I’m heading in early today,” he says—then turns to the man on the bed, staring for a moment. “He seems sick.”

“He might be,” Nick rubs at his own eyes and watches little galaxies dance in his vision. “I’ll figure it out.”

Livio retreats to the kitchen to finish his meal and Nick trails after, meaning to rifle through their medicine cabinet, but the blinking light on the answering machine catches his eye.

“Someone call?” he asks, wandering towards it.

“Dunno,” Livio answers around a mouthful of sandwich. “Just got up right before you got home.”

Nick runs the message back and lets the little voice recording play. His bike is done at the shop, ready for pick up, and he has just enough time to make it. Finally, his first stroke of good luck in what feels like three lifetimes.

“Can I ask a favour?”

“I’ll probably say no out of spite, but shoot.”

Nick rolls his eyes and finds Livio at the kitchen table, mouth full like a chipmunk.

“My bike’s ready at the shop. Would you drop me off so I can grab it?”

“Why would I do that?” Livio grumbles, like the little brother he is.

“Because then I wouldn’t have to steal the car and keep resetting your radio stations. Which I will do. Out of spite.”

“Be ready in ten minutes.”

Nick grabs a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers on the way back to his room. The man is right where he left him, flat on his back and dead to the world. He looks painfully warm. Nick removes his socks and jacket for something to do, then tries to rouse him.

“Hey,” he murmurs, cradling the man to sit vaguely upright against Nick’s side. He presses the back of his hand to his forehead. “You’re burning up. Can you take this medicine for me?”

The man groans, muttering something, and turns away from Nick’s voice.

Grumpy, Nick thinks, poking at his furrowed eyebrows. “C’mon, spikey, it’ll be quick,” he promises.

The blond groans again but cracks his eyes open, slivers of piercing blue, and watches Nick shake out a dose into his palm. He lets Nick feed the pills directly into his mouth, lips dragging over the calloused skin of his palm, and Nick’s stomach feels like it’s in knots.

Nick presses the thumb of his other hand into the hinge of his jaw, a light pressure to keep his mouth open as he brings the glass to his lips. He swigs it all down dutifully, eyes fluttering closed while Nick holds him. Nick watches the bob of his throat and feels his own click where he unconsciously swallows.

Nick sets the glass on the side table and gently lays the man back on the pillow, tucking the blanket around him: he’s not sure why, it just feels right. Like a comfort he would want if he was alone and lost and sick in a stranger’s bed—like how he brushes the man’s sweat-damp blond fringe away from his forehead. The man leans into the touch, his eyes flitting about in whatever dream he’s already fallen into.

“Don’t go anywhere,” Nick murmurs. The man’s eyes just barely open at the sound. “I’ll be right back, so stay put, alright?”

As the man drifts for a second time, Nick drags himself away from his feverish skin and silken hair. The man in his arms is lit in the soft glow of the bedside lamp and Nick stares at his exhausted profile, thinking, Who else does this man have in the whole world right now? He’s all alone.

The thought makes his chest feel tight, so he forces himself to stand and rejoin Livio. With any luck he’ll be back before he wakes again. Fever-dreams are hard to break from but he wouldn’t wager any money on alien biology.

The ride is silent: just Nick, his brother, and his brothers’ irritation sitting between them. Nick feels irreparably guilty. For their fight, for the sudden distance, for potentially putting him in harms way.

As Livio parks outside the mechanics shop Nick swallows his pride and twists to face him, “Hey Liv?”

“I don’t have time, Nick,” Livio sighs.

“I know, just—I’m sorry. For the other day. I was being shitty.”

“You were,” Livio side-eyes him.

“Glad we’re on the same page,” Nick barely refrains from rolling his eyes. “I didn’t mean any of it. I was—”

“Jealous?” Livio grumbles.

“Don’t get carried away. But, I’m sorry. And if you want to go to Uni in the fall, we’ll figure it out—like we’ve always done.”

Livio doesn’t quite seem believe him, and Nick can’t blame him. He’s never been one for apologies but, well—his little brother was his most important person, the only family he had, so he’d skin himself raw for the kid and cringe later.

“Really? You really don’t think it’s a waste?” Livio asks.

“Not if you want to go.”

His brother hesitates, “I’m sorry, too. I didn’t need to be a dick about it.”

“I started it,” Nick shrugs, starting to grin. Life was always easier with his little brother. He wouldn’t trade it for anything.

“Yeah, but I’ve always been better than you about not being a dick,” Livio snickers.

“And on that note!” Nick hefts himself up and out the old car door. Leaning back down, he gives Livio a quick punch in the arm before he can flinch away. “See you at home.”

“You’re just proving my point!” Livio calls after him.

Nick turns to flip him off as he approaches the shop door and sees Livio do the same—but he’s grinning like the kid Nick remembers for the better part of fifteen years. He watches his brother drive off, feeling just a little bit lighter.

One problem solved, a ridiculous, alien-amount left to go.

With his beloved Angelina back under him he breaks a few speed limits heading home just to feel her purr, before making a quick stop at the convenience store a few blocks away. He grabs a couple candy-coloured bottles of Pedialyte with a few crumpled dollars in his wallet and hopes it’s compatible with whatever the fuck the man in his bed is.

The stranger is where he left him, now curled on his side, his dreaming expression verging on miserable. Nick presses his hair back from his forehead—it feels blistering. The man makes a discontented little whimper as Nick jostles him and Nick’s stomach sinks with something akin to guilt.

“Hey, blondie,” he whispers, patting at the man’s cheek. “C’mon. You need to drink.”

The man cracks his eyes open and gives him a kitten-glare, all puffed up and ruffled. Nick pokes him again and tries not to laugh too outwardly at the way the man huffs and twists around in annoyance.

Nick takes a seat next to him and gets his palms under the man’s solid body, shifting him almost into his lap because the little shit won’t sit up on his own. “Up,” Nick grunts as the stranger’s head flops onto his shoulder. “You are so dramatic,” Nick tells him, fighting a smile.

The man just whines and elbows him lightly in the ribs, plastering on his own smile all the while as if it was an accident. Nick glares and bumps him back.

He tries to hand the plastic bottle to him but the man curls up and pouts. He’s flushed and pathetic looking and Nick is not doing this. “You can drink it yourself,” he grinds out.

The man makes no move to take it.

“You are such a shit,” Nick accuses, but twists off the cap anyway. The blond seems to be trying to suppress a smile as he tips his head back. He lets Nick press the plastic bottle lip to his open mouth.

For all his playing coy, he drinks it greedily, eyes pinched shut and throat working hard. Nick tries not to stare. Suddenly the Indiana Jones poster he’s had since high school is very interesting.

The man seems more awake than before but still sprawls across Nick as if he can’t hold himself up—Nick wonders if he wasn’t as unaffected by the desert sun as he seemed, or if this was something else entirely.

“You gotta give me something here, blondie,” Nick all but begs.

The man slides off his shoulder till he can flop back onto the bed, staring up at Nick from his pillows and sheets. He rubs at his prosthetic like he aches. The colour of the metal makes his pale skin look ghostly.

“I’ll help you, I’m not that heartless, but I need something to work with here. Where are you from? Who was with you, why are you here? What can we even do? That ship thing was half-buried and obviously beat to hell.”

The man cranes his head back, baring his neck and staring at the ceiling. He lets out a petulant sigh and holds his prosthetic hand out to Nick.

“Yeah, I know, cool tech. Super weird. That doesn’t really help me.”

The man meets Nick’s eyes and twists the hollowed wrist of the metal arm, tapping at the dark band circling the thin structure of his wrist. Nick takes the hand in his, turning it every which way to inspect it.

The band is wide with a deep stack of layers, pieces of metal interlocked in a careful structure and a dark screen—how could something like all this be small enough to fit on a wristwatch?

“What is this?”

The stranger mimes using a screwdriver, then points to Nick’s closet—where he keeps his tool kit.

“You went through my stuff,” Nick accuses without bite. He thinks he might be more surprised if a stranger left alone in his room didn’t rifle through his shit. Nick knows he would if the tables were flipped.

The man barely looks repentant. He smiles brightly again from his little nest in the sheets and Nick feels his chest constrict. Scared of it showing on his face, he stands to retrieve the kit and hand it off. He thinks his own face might feel warm, or it’s just the perpetual desert heatwave.

Nick watches as the man makes a show of dragging himself upright, groaning and pouting the whole time, and selects the tiniest screwdriver of the bunch. Without removing the band he begins tinkering at something Nick can’t see from his angle. He can hear the small sounds of metal on metal.

“You didn’t answer my question.”

The man raises his eyebrows as he works.

“What is that? Why is it important?”

The man drops his hands to his lap, looking thoroughly annoyed. Nick likes how it looks on him.

He chirps something in that sweet, flowing language and then points between Nick and himself—his expression reads, get it?

“It’s broken,” Nick guesses.

The man returns to tinkering till there’s a few small pops—the release of a mechanic, or a failure of one. His stranger holds his flesh hand out to Nick to show him what he has sitting in his palm: three little squares, the smallest circuit boards Nick has ever seen, carefully attached to one another with wiring so thin Nick is scared he’ll snap them if he even looks at it too long.

One board is cracked, the deep divot extending through one of the little ports, and another piece looks like it went part way through a cheese grater. The third seems intact.

Nick touches that third piece gingerly and quickly pulls away. “Is this how you can understand me?”

The man nods, then points to the other two pieces that are obviously worse for wear.

“And… those are the reason I can’t understand you,” he surmises.

Again, a nod, but he looks downtrodden—how shitty, Nick thinks, to be stranded on a planet with not a single other person that can understand you, no matter how loud you scream. That’s the true definition of alone.

“Can we fix it?”

He just shrugs and flops onto his back, watching Nick’s reaction.

If this thing has been feeding Nick’s words back to him in a language he understands, that explains why he hasn’t been able to write out answers—only mime actions and places and hope for the best. He’s probably exhausted trying to translate between his words and what Nick can interpret, walking around with a head wound and a dead or missing friend.

Nick takes the little green and gold circuits to study them closer. They’re obviously more advanced than anything he’s come across in his own electronics and in local pawnshops, but he’s pretty sure they should be able to do something. He’s watched Elizabeth tinker around in her garage enough while he and Meryl smoked and made unnecessary commentary.

“What could we use on it? Like, a solder to weld the parts that are fucked up? Would that work?”

The man shrugs again, rucking up the sheets beneath his shoulders. He still looks exhausted with that dazed edge to his eyes.

Nick has an idea—maybe not a good one, but something is better than nothing.

“You rest,” he tells the blond, touches his arm just for something to do with his hands. Hopes it’s a comfort. “I’m going to try to get some tools that might work for these. If it doesn’t work, well, shit. We tried something at least.”

Nick gently gathers the little intricate circuits from the man’s hand and sets his toolkit aside.

The stranger smiles, all soft edges, and presses the curve of it into Nick’s pillow. The sight makes Nick sweat. That’s his cue to dip.

“I’ll be back.”

He leaves the man to doze and heads to the kitchen to first bag up the little pieces and tuck them away in his pocket. It’s best to have proof.

In the living room he digs out the little address book by the phone and finds Meryl’s number—he knows it by heart now—and marks the number just beneath it.

Elizabeth’s work office. It was supposed to be for emergencies only but Nick figures she’ll get over it.

Her assistant Kess answers her office phone, rattling off her titles, and Nick is even polite enough to let him finish this time. “Is Elizabeth in?”

“She’s busy down in the labs. Who is this?”

“Meryl’s friend, Nicholas. Can you page her?”

“Is this an emergency?” Kess asks, unbothered. Nick rolls his eyes.

“Sure.”

“Nick, she asked to not be bothered while working on this proj—”

“Just tell her that Nick has a question for her and she’s the only one who might have an answer,” He appeals, then pauses. He figures he should try to reign in being a dick at least a bit. “Please.”

Kess puts him on hold and Nick slouches against the wall to wait, listening for any signs that his visitor is up or unwell. The house stays silent.

The line clicks and Elizabeth’s voice comes over the connection, sounding a little harried, “Nick?”

“Hey, Elizabeth!”

“Is Meryl alright? Did something happen?”

“Nope, as far as I’m aware she’s just at work right now. I had a few quick questions for you—”

“Nicholas you asshole—”

“Wait wait wait do not hang up,” he pleads. He knows her well enough to know she’ll end the conversation and screen his calls till he’s dead if he wastes her time.

“Talk. Quickly.”

“You work with circuit boards and all kinds of fun nerdy shit like that, right?”

“Nick, you know I’m an engineer. What is this about?”

“Let’s say you have some really tiny boards that got roughed up—do you have the equipment to repair them?”

“I’m not fixing your stuff for you, I’m doing actual work—”

“I don’t need your time, just the tools.”

“What for?”

Nick glances back towards the cracked door of his bedroom and grimaces, “Er, kinda hard to explain right now. I’m also asking for a bit of your trust?”

“You’ll owe me,” she warns—not unkindly. Elizabeth was a woman not afraid to cash in what she earned.

Nick thinks of the stranger in his bed, pressed to his side, weeping and alone and terrified. He realizes he desperately wants to hear his voice—hear him finally tell Nick his name.

“I’ll owe you double. You’d be helping me out big time.”

For all of Elizabeth’s gusto, she was actually a sweetheart—she sighs but must hear Nick’s rare conviction, “Be here in fifteen when I take my break or you’re not getting shit.”

Nick hangs up and races to check on his new friend one last time: he’s curled up on his side again like a child, face smushed into Nick’s pillow. He seems to be drooling. Gross. Fucking dork.

Nick’s just glad he’s not awake to see him crack a smile. He locks the front door behind himself and takes off.

He spends most of the ride thinking how good it feels to be back on his bike—it feels like flying, like gravity has a glitch. He’s always been a bit of an aggressive driver, weaving in and out of traffic because he likes the way it makes his heart pick up.

He wonders if the blond would like to go on a ride when he was feeling better. It may not be a spaceship but Nick has a feeling he would appreciate that weightless sensation just as Nick does taking a corner just a little bit too fast.

Elizabeth’s worked in the fancy engineering office on the nice side of town as long as Nick has known her. She was impressive at what she did, even if Nick was still cloudy on what exactly that was. All he knew was she spent long hours in a lab under contract and knew more about energy resources than probably anyone currently breathing.

The front desk gives him a half-glance and asks who he was looking for—they don’t even bother to hide their surprise to hear him drop Elizabeth’s name. To be fair, he is still in an old band shirt and jeans, both sweaty and dusty.

Fuck, it’s been a long day. He promises himself he’s getting into bed after this, maybe even calling off tomorrow.

The engineer herself comes striding out a few minutes later, all flowery skirts and shiny high heels under her bright lab coat, hands in her pockets. Nick was more than sure she was hiding a carton in those deep pockets. She murmurs something to the front desk staff and they share a quick laugh before she joins Nicholas.

“Come on,” is all she says.

He follows her around the concrete building to a shaded corner away from the parking lot and cameras. She immediately pulls out a pack of menthols and Nick takes that as his cue to light up his own—the burn of it feels good after the day he’s had.

She turns to him, blowing out a harsh trail of smoke, “So, what’s this about? I need to see it to know if what I have will even work.”

Nick carefully pulls the sandwich bag of pieces out of his pocket and holds it out for her to inspect. She squints, pretty brow furrowing, and then takes it from his hand to look closer.

“Where did you get this?” she asks without looking up.

Nick shrugs, “Just found it in some old junk at a garage sale.”

“You’re messing with me,” she accuses. “You didn’t just find something like this at a garage sale.”

“I did—Liv and I swung by one on 3rd earlier. We thought maybe we could rig ‘em for our car radio. That old thing’s getting jank.”

She stares at him for a long moment, thinking, cigarette forgotten. “Nick I’ve never seen anything like these. This looks like technology that just… doesn’t exist. I don’t even recognize these materials, or connectors. How could something so small even be carrying enough of an electrical current—”

“Just,” Nick cuts her off, suddenly bone-deep exhausted. “It’s been a really shitty two days, Liz. Probably the shittiest two days I’ve ever had—and you know that means something because I’m from New Hope. I just need to figure out how to repair these for a, a friend,” he stutters. “I’ll explain more to you later but right now even I don’t have answers.”

“Does Meryl know what you’re up to?”

Nick grimaces, “Sort of?”

Elizabeth takes a long drag of her cigarette before stomping it out under her stiletto heel. “I think I have a kit that will work but I can’t promise it, since I don’t know for sure what materials these are,” she tells him. “Stay,” she points, before taking off back to the main building, shoes clicking on the sidewalk.

Nick takes the opportunity to smoke at his leisure. Not much time to smoke and veg out when he’s babysitting a fucking accident-prone alien. Nick realizes he can’t properly feel the delineation between before he met the blond and after—as if he took up more space in his memory than he should.

Elizabeth doesn’t disappear for long, and when she returns it’s with a bright red case, her big ass company logo plastered on the side. She carefully passes it to him.

“You lose or break anything, and no one will find your body. I want it back in twenty-four hours.”

“I owe you,” Nick tells her, sincerely.

“We’ll discuss that later,” she grins, delighted. “I’ve got to get back to work. Don’t injure yourself—I think Meryl would be upset.”

“Can’t have that,” Nick agrees.

He gives Elizabeth a two-finger salute and they part ways. The sky is turning purple as twilight sinks in, the north star already out overhead. It makes his drive home feel a little more peaceful.

He rushes home—something about leaving an alien unsupervised in his house feels dire. Nick decides it’s just because he’s a walking ER trip waiting to happen. If the little shit would even go to the ER.

The house is still in one piece when he gets back, and Nick takes a moment to flip on the lamps as the shadows lengthen. They make the house feel warm, almost welcoming.

His new friend is still in Nick’s bed but he’s managed to maneuver upright by himself finally, idly rubbing at where his prosthetic meets his bicep, yawning as he flips through some book he’d stolen from somewhere.

“Score!” Nick announces as he enters—the man jumps as if he had been caught doing something he shouldn’t. Cute.

Nick means to bring the case to him but the man waves him off and gingerly slides his feet to the floor. He’s wobbly like a deer when he stands and Nick rushes to catch him before he falls like an idiot.

His bare arm is still warm to the touch but he seems better—a little less glassy-eyed, a little more lucid in Nick’s arms.

He stares at Nick with an expression Nick can’t figure, but even he might call it sweet.

His companion wanders back out into the living room with Nick trailing after, and the two settle on the couch close enough for their knees to bump. Nick finds he’s started to like the twinge of static that jumps between them. It’s familiar now, a comfort in its own way.

Nick sets the bag of fancy electrical pieces and the case down on the coffee table, flipping it open. “Alright, I don’t know what any of this shit is, but—go for it, space cadet.”

The man stares down into its contents, starry-eyed as he begins picking through the set. It’s far more tools than Nick had assumed—multiple solders and coloured tape and meters. He had never even touched anything like it. Looking at an entire kit feels daunting.

The man sits himself on the floor by the coffee table and immediately begins removing items, connecting wires, completely immersed in his work. He seems at ease, his movements vaguely practiced. Nick wonders what he did back home—if he was a nerd like Elizabeth.

“Do you know what you’re doing?” Nick asks. The last thing he needs on top of everything else the last twenty-four hours is a house fire. Livio would kill him.

The man sticks his tongue out like a brat and Nick makes to grab it, just to see the man jump and laugh.

His stranger pats at Nick’s leg for his attention then gestures at the circuitry pieces he has laid across the table top, making vague shapes with his hands. It takes Nick a few tries, “Oh, material?”

He and Livio don’t own much in the way of electronics, but Nick does find an old boombox sitting on a shelf in the hall closet. He doesn’t think either of them have touched it since they moved in. He grabs his own tool kit for good measure because once he settles in he is not moving for at least three hours. He dumps it all on the coffee table and the blond lights up.

He seems more than enthusiastic to start prying apart their boombox with a hammer and playing with its innards—making little piles of circuitry and wires and plastic bits by a rubric Nick doesn’t understand.

“You definitely have to be a scientist,” Nick accuses, laughing. The man pauses long enough to give Nick that little shit-eating grin again before returning to his work. He’s completely immersed—Nick is sure the house could be on fire around them and he wouldn’t notice.

While his companion starts setting up whatever the fuck it is he’s decided he’s doing, Nick stretches his long legs down the length of the couch with a pillow and the TV remote.

Well-earned veg time, thank god.

He flips through old goofy horror films and senseless game shows, mindlessly cycling through till his new friend starts setting up the actual solder.

“Don’t burn your fingers off,” Nick grins, cycling through a couple more channels. He gets a sharp metal elbow to his thigh for his trouble.

Nick keeps half his attention on the man at his feet and eventually settles on a Voltron rerun just for shits.

“Look, blondie,” he nudges his shoulder with his foot and points to an on-screen shot of the robot lions in deep space. “It’s your people.”

The blond flips him off over his shoulder, barely looking back, and Nick gasps, “Who taught you that?”

He nods at Nick, expression coy. Nick fakes shock and presses a hand to his heart, “Are you calling me a bad influence?”

His companion nods again, laughing—the sound is pretty, rough and genuine in a way that makes Nick’s heart flutter. He kicks his leg out to hide the way it affects him, knocking the man over. He just laughs harder.

They eventually settle into a comfortable quiet: the man opens the windows to vent the house and gets to work smelting together bits and pieces Nick doesn’t understand. He works quickly, fingers nimble and obviously attuned to the movements, jumping back and forth between the two tiny slates of tech while Nick half-watches his silly space cartoon.

Over an hour passes before Nick’s traitorous brain supplies the thought: I could live like this.

He likes these moments, this quiet. He feels settled in a way he can’t remember ever experiencing. Playing music for him in the car, sitting by his side while he works, hearing his stupid laugh. Nick was enjoying himself without even realizing it.

He curb-stomps the thought as quickly as it forms.

The characters on-screen are discussing the logistics of deep-space travel and war as his companion shifts to working on the band again, fitting pieces in paper-thin stacks of metal and muttering to himself. Nick’s pleasantly warm and content with the cooling evening air from the open windows and has started to doze.

“t̶͉̜̘͔͈̰̩̂̽̄ȟ̵̭́̈́ ̷̛̟̣͍̇̉i̸̙͘͝͝ ̸̡̩̭͖̄̃͆̀̄̐s̸̬̩͚͈̼̰̎̃͗̊͆͘ ̶̗̺͕̉̍̊̏̕ ̸̼̝͇̦̫͉̍̎w̵͖̅̈́̓̕r̷rongû̵͎̯̯̬͔̃̐̏̚͝ ̷̢̬̗͓̝͔͒ḡ̴̳̻̭͈̰̙̺́̀̒̋́͠h̵̡̭͙̒̒͋͊ẖ̴̆̍͝ͅ.”

Nick thinks for a moment he misheard, and on reflex he sleepily mutters, “Hm?”

“h̴̦̤͂̓͜͝ ̸̪̝͎̎s̸̮͉̘̀̎̀ show got it so wrong,” his companion complains, not looking up. His voice is melodic and soft and Nick’s brain starts frantically putting pieces together.

It wasn’t just a jumble of song and vowels. They were words. Words that Nick could understand. And they came from the little blond dork at his feet.

“I understood you,” Nick whispers, frantic, throwing himself upright. His friend twists to look at him, back ramrod straight and pretty eyes wide.

“You understood me?” he asks, excitement and disbelief plain on his face where he kneels.

“I understood you!”

The man jumps onto the couch, clambering almost entirely into Nick’s lap and boxing him in against the arm rest.

“You can understand me!” He cheers, cupping Nick’s face—he’s absolutely radiant. Pure sunshine and chaos.

Nick grips his arms. He thinks his grin might mar his face, the way it splits him wide. “What’s your name?” He asks—begs.

“Vash! My name is Vash!” The blond cries, elated, and slinks closer. “I have so much I want to tell you!”

Chapter 4: a two-sided macrame project

Chapter Text

"Tell me everything."

Vash melts guiltily away from Nick and looks near tears as he hiccups, “This is all my fault.”

Nick keeps silent to give the man a moment to collect his thoughts. His distress is nearly palpable over the small distance between them, all the glee at solving one problem burned up far too quickly.

Vash’s shoulders hike upwards, hands twisting in his lap as he avoids Nick’s patient stare. He swallows hard before he starts.

“We weren’t supposed to be here. We were going to an entirely different arm of your galaxy. It’s beautiful, really, all the arms of this spiral galaxy. There’s so much potential here—you humans have so much potential.” He sighs, glances away like he expects to be chided.

Nick wishes he could comfort him, reassure him and get that pitiful look off his face, but once again Nick is hit with the overwhelming realization at Vash’s words that he is far out of his depth.

“When I was studying to be a researcher, I found some information on Earth. There’s not a lot of it, our people didn’t think there was much there to study or any real reason to make contact. Thought it might even be dangerous. But I was so surprised to see other intelligent carbon-based life in this wing of the galaxy, I just had to know more! And you’re so similar to us—not as biologically diverse, but functionally similar. It was a marvel how you all developed. So many near chances and feats of science on a macro-scale. I guess… I got a little enamored.”

“So, you were out for a flight and decided to take a detour?”

Vash has the decency to look chagrined. Nick wants to kick himself.

“My brother and I were assigned a research mission near this section of your galaxy. I convinced Nai no one would notice if we tacked an extra bit of time onto our expedition so I could spend some time here, maybe even approach a human! Nai’s never been good at telling me no,” Vash laughs but the sound is humorless and flat. It hurts to hear.

“But, on entry into the atmosphere—something happened. All our instruments failed at once. We were getting error codes for equipment I’d only ever seen in training. I tried rebooting systems, rerouting power, running back-up programs to override it. Nothing worked. I thought the whole ship would completely depressurize. I thought I had gotten my brother killed—the fact that we landed at all is a miracle.”

“That’s not your fault,” Nick shakes his head, ready to defend Vash against himself, but Vash takes a sharp breath and cuts him off.

“It is. I’m the one who did the last flight checks. I—I missed something. Or messed something up. I’m not sure, even now. But if I hadn’t asked to detour maybe we would have made it to our assignment and landed before it happened.”

“Or you saved the two of you by having a place to crash land instead of spiraling out in space till you lost complete control and died. You have no way of knowing either way, and it’s not going to help you to wallow about something you can never possibly know.”

Vash chews at his lip, studying the floor as he considers Nick’s words. “I guess.”

Nick knows that he shouldn’t ask, that Vash in distress and reliving a near-death experience isn’t the best time, but he needs to know, “Where is your brother?”

Vash’s eyes are wet. He shrugs before speaking and his voice wobbles in a way Nick never wants to be familiar with.

“I don’t know. All the alarms were going off, I could barely think straight, and Nai strapped me into my seat before impact—I think I blacked out but I’m not sure how long. I just remember when I came to everything had stopped. It was so silent that for a moment I thought we had died. And then Nai was in front of me saying he was going for help. He said not to go anywhere. When I came to again he was gone and the ship was locked-down on emergency power.”

“You were out in the desert looking for him when I found you,” Nick finishes for him. Vash nods and tries to subtly wipe his eyes. Nick briefly feels that need again—to gather Vash up, keep him safe and sound, tell him everything would be okay.

“We’ll find him,” Nick promises instead. The words feel heavy but there’s no regret there, no hesitation to offer himself to this man he barely knew. He would help Vash find his brother and get home. He knew that without a doubt.

Vash stares, breathing a little erratic as he fights off his tears. He looks so terribly sad. “I can’t take anything else from you, Nick.”

“You haven’t taken anything from me that I didn’t want to give,” Nick argues. “I’m here because I want to help you. And now helping you means finding your brother. Though you don’t seem to be in any shape for it at the moment,” Nick points out, pressing the back of his hand to Vash’s forehead to test the heat of his skin.

Vash sighs and sways forward against him.

“Ah, yeah. Traveler’s sickness. I get it on almost every planet. New atmosphere, new viruses, you know how it is,” he shrugs, laughing at himself again. “Intergalactic researchers get a full vaccination panel, so it’s no big deal. It should pass by tomorrow.”

“So, what I’m hearing is you were just being a baby,” Nick half-heartedly grumbles as he withdraws his hand, but it gets the desired reaction. Vash glances up, lips twisted in a smile he’s obviously fighting, and quickly wipes away the last of his tears from his long lashes.

Nick ducks out to grab the tissue box for him. Vash is flustered and fidgety and can’t quite seem to meet Nicholas’ eyes. Watching the blond cycle through stages of grief and anxiety so quickly is a whirlwind that leaves Nick feeling flayed open—he wonders if the pretty alien boy is feeling raw and wrung out in all the same ways.

“Thank you,” Vash mutters—then sets the tissues aside and takes Nick’s hands, holding them carefully between them. “For everything. I can never thank you enough for everything you’ve done for me.”

Nick feels an embarrassed heat creep up his neck. He never was the type to enjoy being seen too closely—he was fine with others thinking him callous or rude, but to be told he was good and kind was a knockout he didn’t realize he couldn’t suffer.

He suddenly feels that they’re too close, knee-to-knee on the couch and Vash’s hands still gently holding his between them. The blond’s big dumb eyes are wide and observant and watching Nick with a kindness he doesn’t think he could ever deserve.

It all makes him feel like he might do something stupid, so he reluctantly pulls away and stands, putting a couch worth of distance between himself and the charming alien bastard that makes him feel shit.

“Hungry, blondie?”

“Yes,” Vash meekly tells him. He twists his own fingers together, suddenly shy again, and peeks out from under his lashes as Nick laughs.

“Yeah, no surprise there.”

Vash squawks and trails after him to the kitchen. “What’s that supposed to mean!”

“You’re always hungry,” Nick points out, patting his cheek. Vash pouts and mimes biting at Nick’s wandering hand. They stick their tongues out at the same time and Nick can’t quell another laugh at the absurdity.

“Getting stranded on your weird planet is hard work,” Vash huffs. He takes what Nick now thinks of as Vash’s seat at the table and continues grumbling under his breath. His pout is almost comical. Nick thinks he wants to hold him again.

He really needed to reign that shit in.

Nick begins pulling sandwich fixings out of the fridge drawers and tossing them on the counter. “Why Earth, anyway?”

“Hm?”

“Why did you want to come here so badly? I know you said you found it interesting but, at the end of the day it’s just a shit planet with shit people—nothing worth risking your life for.”

Vash startles at the question and gives Nick one of those fond looks, like Nick has said something silly.

“Humans are fascinating. We’ve traveled so many places, documented so many lifeforms and societies, but we’ve rarely found something as… persistent as humans. High-level intelligence and complex cultures, problem-solving, innovation. Every complex species likes to daydream about if there’s other life out in space, but I think it’s a lost art to understand just how rare it is to evolve so far.”

Nick lays out a few slices of bread and makes a disbelieving sound, “Well, I went to public school in New Hope. I wouldn’t exactly call the human race a high-level of intelligence.”

“It’s all perspective,” Vash laughs, lounging back in his chair, long legs splayed out and smile disarming. Nick forces himself to focus on his task rather than god damn his legs are long.

“From where you stand I can understand the frustration, maybe even disappointment in your species. But look at all you’ve accomplished overall! And in such little time! A few million years is nothing in the grand scheme. As an outsider with nothing but a textbook of thousands of other civilizations that didn’t last even a quarter as long—humans are amazing.”

“Well shit, blondie, when you put it like that it sounds almost romantic,” he laughs. And it does: the fanciful spiel of a scientist truly enamored with his work, a passion Nick thinks he hasn’t felt in his entire life.

Passionate was a good look on Vash, too. Nick thinks he could listen to him ramble all night.

Nick slides Vash a plated sandwich and another Pedialyte before sinking down in the chair next to him—Nick’s chair, on Vash’s left.

Vash flushes deeply and eyes his sandwich. “I guess it kind of does, yeah,” he murmurs before picking up the sandwich to study it nervously. After a weirdly long moment staring, he takes a bite that encompasses half the damn thing.

“Oh yeah,” Nick starts, drawing Vash’s wide eyes back to him. “Why do you always act like I’ve poisoned you when I make you food? You had no problem scarfing all of Liv’s donuts last night,” he points out. If pressed he would say he’s just curious—definitely not at all hurt at the notion of lacking Vash’s trust.

Vash fidgets, turns away, swallows loud enough his throat clicks. The high plane of his cheeks and the little pointed tips of his ears seem to grow ruddier. “Just wasn’t sure if it was for me,” he shrugs, picking at the bread.

The hell did that mean?

“Who the hell else would it be for?”

Vash carefully sets his sandwich down and fidgets in his chair. Out of all the weird alien explanations Nick thought might come out of his mouth, his bingo card didn’t contain: “Where I’m from, making food for someone is courtship. To show you can provide for them. It shows romantic and sexual interest.”

The weirdly direct approach shouldn’t have surprised him, and yet Nick chokes on his own sandwich all the same. He actually thought he could live through it till the word sexual fell from his dumb, rambling mouth.

Embarrassingly, Nick has to scramble to the sink and drain a glass of water around his hacking and coughing. When he can finally catch his breath he turns to Vash again, who seems to have been watching in amused silence.

Little shit.

“I didn’t—”

“I know!” Vash throws up his hands in surrender and leans away as Nick stomps back to the table. Nick feels so flushed he’s sure that his ears are pinker than Vash’s. Definitely karma for giving Vash such a hard time.

Vash continues his anxious, spluttery rambling, “Just, it was weird! For me. Not that you did anything weird, I really appreciate you taking care of me—” he babbles.

“Well, I have to take care of you!” Nick argues. He knows he’s poking at him just to argue, trying to push buttons, but he can’t help it while Vash stares at him like that and talks about sexual interest. “You don’t even know how to work a shower!”

Christ, Vash had spent the last twenty-four hours thinking, wondering, if Nick was trying to fuck him?

Maybe it was better when Vash couldn’t talk to him.

“We use biotech for stuff like that, it just registers heat signatures or, or fingerprint scans! We don’t use dumb knobs like those, so how was I supposed to know!”

Nick rolls his eyes as Vash crosses his arms and pouts—apparently he likes to do that, Nick notes.

“An intergalactic scientist and you can’t figure out how to do this?” He mimes turning a knob in a quarter arc.

“I have a head injury,” Vash groans, slouching in his chair. His pout is terribly dramatic considering the little blond shit started this. “You’re being mean to someone with a head injury, you know.”

“Eat your damn sandwich. And keep it in your pants while you’re at it,” he grumbles. And if the next bite he takes is a little violent, well, Vash is a little too preoccupied with his own theatrics to point it out.

After a long moment of silently eating close enough for their elbows to bump, Nick mutters down at his own plate, “I wasn’t trying to sleep with you.”

Vash glances up, “Sleep with?”

Nick’s switched between English and Spanish long enough to know that translation isn’t always one-to-one. He wonders how exactly it translates in Vash’s head and hates that he has to be so frank.

“Have sex with you,” Nick clarifies. It comes out gruffer than he intends and realizes a second too late that perhaps he didn’t need to sound so put-off by the idea. It’s not that hooking up with Vash is an unpleasant thought, but with healing injuries and a missing brother and all maybe now wasn’t the time to hit on the hot alien guy.

Vash wrinkles his nose, thick brows furrowing. “Good,” he huffs. “I wouldn’t want to. You’re…” he flounders for a miserable second. “Scruffy.”

Nick sets his sandwich down, lightly offended. “Scruffy? I’m scruffy? Let me tell you, blondie, I’ve never had a complaint,” he sneers—delights in the way Vash seems to puff up like a kitten. His eyes are bright like he’s ready for an actual fight.

God, Nick is a little gone on him, isn’t he?

“And arrogant too,” Vash declares, whipping his head away to take the last bite of his sandwich. Nick notices his flush reaching down his neck again—wonders how far it goes.

Nope. Bad.

“And you’re a baby when you get a space cold or whatever the fuck it is,” Nick snarks. He pushes the bottle of Pedialyte towards him. “Drink.”

Vash does as he’s told, pouting and grumbling the whole while. Nick just makes faces back.

With their late dinner completed they wander back into the living room where the remnants of the last few hours still lay strewn across the coffee table and couch.

“Oops,” Vash squeaks, rubbing at his undercut.

Vash begins re-organizing Elizabeth’s tools and neatly packing them away. The boombox to his right is gutted like a pumpkin on Halloween. Vash looks regretful as Nick picks it up to inspect the alien’s handiwork.

“That’s a little beyond repair now. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. We never used it.” Nick pauses, swallows, and continues against his better judgement. “Was worth it, anyway.”

Nick retreats to set the ruined box aside and Vash finishes his clean-up. When Vash makes to stand his knees bow, body wobbling, and Nick can’t stop himself from catching him before he can hit the carpet.

Nick eases him down onto the couch, letting Vash flop onto the cushions, hands still clutching Vash’s arms. Some part of him is nervous for reasons he doesn’t want to prod at.

Vash yawns so hard his nose scrunches.

“You look exhausted,” Nick points out. Vash shrugs it off and smiles—the fake one that doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I’ll survive,” he waves Nick off as if he hasn’t spent the last few days running on pure anxiety and fear.

Vash chooses then to glance down and sees Nick still holding onto him. Nick quickly drops his hands.

“About your brother,” Nick starts, desperate to steer the conversation to something more productive. “Any ideas where he would run? Do you think he’s lost out in the desert?”

Vash shakes his head. “No,” he says, his tone clipped. Nick thinks he wants to say something more but Vash just settles back against the couch instead, looking worn out.

“Any chance he would wander into town, then?”

“He… doesn’t trust humans, but if he thought I needed help he would have gone. He would have risked it.”

“You two are close, huh?”

Nick thinks of smoking pilfered cigarettes behind the orphanage when he and Livio were barely double-digits: bandaging scraped knees and wiping the younger boy’s silent tears in a cot too small for the both of them.

Nick knows he would risk it, too. Without question.

Vash nods, fondly reminiscing, “For most of our lives it was only the two of us and our adoptive mother. She always says we’ve been attached at the hip from day one. We did everything together. Our schooling, our specialization, applying for our research license.” Vash’s eyes start to look misty, gaze stuck on something far away. “What if I can’t find him? What if he’s hurt somewhere alone?”

He turns to Nick, tears welling again in earnest now. Nick can’t find the words, wouldn’t know how to help quell the heartbreak in Vash’s face, so he does what he knows he’s able: Nick opens his arms and Vash crawls into them without hesitation. Presses his face to Nick’s chest, trying to hide the way his breath hitches.

“We’ll find him, you crybaby,” Nick promises for the second time that night. He rubs his thumb along the divot of Vash’s wide shoulder blade and feels the tremors. “We will. We’ll go first thing in the morning. Seriously, how many dorky aliens could possibly be in the area?”

Vash chokes on a laugh between his sobs. “We’re twins, if that helps.”

Nick groans—he can barely handle one Vash, the idea of a twin is way too much.

“Well, sort of,” Vash amends.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“We don’t look exactly like twins. His hair is lighter, and his eyes are greener. And his mole is under his other eye,” Vash leans back to tap beneath his right eye. “We’re twins in the way that two halves of a whole are twins. We came from the same p̵̛̩͎̃̏̓̇l̵̢̅̉̌̽ ̸͈̥͙̊̒̉̓͐a̵̬̱̅̕ǹ̶̖t̸̛̲̞̳̃̓͘ ̸̠̭̃̆ͅg̶̡̺̙̿̽͠g̷̙̟̑͌-̷̨̙͊ͅ-̶͈̩̑̍ͅt̸̢̞̉ͅ.”

“The same what?”

“It’s like our mother, but… not really? My species isn’t born so much as… made, I guess.”

“You were a little macrame project, huh?”

Vash grins and lightly punches Nick in the arm. “More like food that got left in the fridge too long and became sentient,” he giggles.

“I’m gonna start calling you Petri Dish,” Nick laughs as Vash squeaks and pokes his bony elbows into Nick’s ribs. “It’s late, and you’re still sick. Do you wanna head to bed? Start fresh in the morning?”

“Yeah,” Vash sighs, pulling out of Nick’s arms. Nick misses the heat and weight of him immediately. “I’ll take the couch though—I don’t want to put you out of your bed.”

Nick shrugs, going for nonchalant. He’s pretty sure he falls flat. “I don’t mind you taking the bed. You are sick and injured after all—what kind of gentleman do you think I am?”

“Not one at all,” Vash deadpans and it’s Nick’s turn to squawk and huff.

He likes Vash with a little bite.

Someone choses that moment to fucking pound on the front door and suddenly Vash is squarely in Nick’s lap, arms a vice around his neck. Nick curses and clutches him back on instinct as if he could tuck him under his chin and keep him safe.

Who the hell would show up at this hour? The actual police? Was Nicholas about to be arrested for aiding and abetting a literal alien? That sounds like Nicholas’ type of shit luck.

“Nick?” Meryl calls through the door. “Open the door, I know your dumbass is still up.”

“We brought leftovers!” Milly chimes in.

Nick and Vash share a glance: Vash looks terrified. He may be comfortable with Nick but three is quite a crowd when you’re an alien stuck on Earth with no clue what you’re doing or where to find the one person you trust across infinite time and space.

But it was also Meryl, who Vash had seemed to adore just as much if not more than Nick, and no one has ever met Millicent Thompson and felt anything less than adoration.

“It’s alright,” he murmurs, bodily moving Vash off his lap—trying hard not to think about how quickly and easily Vash had jumped in his lap and the way it made his stomach feel like it might crawl out through his mouth. “It’s just the girls, it’s fine. Go grab your jacket.”

Vash scrambles to do as he’s told, sliding back into the living room a moment later with his fancy alien-tech prosthetic hidden under the long sleeve of Nick’s red jacket. At a glance—ignoring the eyes and slightly oddly shaped ears and sharper-than-normal little teeth—he kind of looks human.

It’ll have to do. Meryl’s already met him anyway. It’ll probably be fine.

When Nick opens the door both women are standing on the dark porch with Milly carrying a couple boxes from Pizza Palace. She waves excitedly. “Hello!”

“Welcome back, big girl. We missed you,” Nick grins as the two pass him into the living room.

Vash is awkwardly hovering by the couch acting like he’s never seen people before. Very subtle. Everything is definitely totally normal here, Nick thinks to himself.

Meryl seems non-plussed, tossing her jacket and name badge onto the floor by the couch, but Milly pulls up short when she catches sight of Vash.

“Oh,” she chirps. “Hello!”

Vash mimics her, giving a “Hello!” full of his usual sunshine as Meryl drops onto the couch. Vash is quick to join her.

“I didn’t realize you had, er, company,” Milly awkwardly tells Nick as he takes the boxes from her.

Meryl hooks her thumb over at Vash. “Are you kidding? Nick couldn’t pull this guy if he tried.”

“He really couldn’t,” Vash snarks, sticking his tongue out at Nick. Their conversation before, the accidental courtship thing, still smarts from embarrassment. Nick wants to put him in a headlock.

Meryl whips her head around and scoots further down the old couch, practically nose to nose with the blond. “You can talk!”

Vash flushes and stutters, “Yeah, uh, just a bit of, ah—a communication error?”

Meryl tells him that she’s glad they worked it out, looking a little confused, but otherwise no one questions it. Milly perches on the recliner and Nick sets the pizza on the coffee table before settling back on Vash’s other side. They’re a bit more squished with Meryl against them, thighs touching and shoulders bumping to get comfortable. Nick is sure at least a few of them weren’t accidental.

“I’m Meryl,” the dark-haired girl tells him brightly, tucking her legs beneath her.

“I remember! From this morning! You’re the nice woman who told me not to let Nick bully me,” he beams and Meryl returns the look.

“That’s what you talked about while I was gone? Me bullying the injured?” Nick asks. Meryl shushes him. Unbelievable.

“And that’s Milly. We’re friends of Nick’s.”

Nick reaches down to pry open one of the pizza boxes. “’Friends’ is a strong word, pipsqueak.”

“I’ll take that pizza back,” Meryl threatens.

Nick quickly leans away, hopefully out of her tiny reach. “No! You gifted it, you can’t take back a gift,” he manages around a mouthful.

“What is it?” Vash leans in to sniff delicately at the pizza in Nick’s hand.

“Pizza. Have you had pizza?” Milly asks, not unkindly, and pauses where she had been getting her own slice. She gives Nick a curious glance that she then shifts to Meryl. Nick thinks he sees Meryl shrug out of the corner of his eye.

This is going well. Maybe I can convince them he’s just a dork from Estonia or something, Nick half panics.

Vash takes a bite straight from Nick’s pizza while he’s distracted. He’s worse than having an unruly dog sometimes. “You’re a menace! Get your own!”

“It’s good!” Vash hums, eyes alight. Definitely food motivated. Nick makes a mental note for future bargaining, even if it apparently is some dumb alien foreplay.

Really gotta stop thinking about that.

“So, how do you know Nick?” Milly asks, all sweet smiles.

Meryl points at where Vash was carefully prying open the pizza box like it was a threat to national security. “Nick found him out in the desert.”

“Oh!” Milly chirps. “This is the guy you told me about! Well, it’s nice to meet you, uh…?”

“Vash!” The blond offers, matching Milly’s grin. These two might get along too well.

“That’s an interesting name,” Milly giggles.

Nick is quick to interject at Vash’s slightly panicked look. “He’s not from around here,” he shrugs. Vash nods encouragingly. Both women seem to take it in stride.

Meryl nods and nudges Vash. “I’m glad you seem to be feeling better,” she murmurs, painfully sincere. Nick was sure her kind, can-do attitude would make this more difficult to navigate. She wasn’t the type to turn away from someone needing help and she knew a little too much already.

And it was Nick’s fault she had been dragged into it in the first place—talk about feeling guilty.

“What were you doing out there, anyway? Nick was really worried.” Meryl casts Nick a sly glance that he chooses to ignore.

Vash wiggles around in his seat, laughing nervously. Nick catches him subtly shuffling his prosthetic hand under his thigh. “It’s complicated,” he offers.

“Whatever it is, we can help you,” Meryl sets a small hand on Vash’s shoulder and gives him a kind smile. Milly cheers her agreement with a thumbs-up and Nick can see Vash melting under it all. Nick knew firsthand how hard it was to deny Meryl and Milly anything. Vash was clearly starting to bow under the affection. Nick couldn’t blame him.

Nick knew it really came down to Vash: if Vash wanted to be honest with them about who he was and where he was from, Nick wasn’t going to stop him. And if he trusted anyone other than himself or Liv with his doofy alien friend, it was the two women sitting in front of them.

Vash gives Nick an unsure glance, sharp little teeth biting into the plush of his lip, and waits.

When Nick offers a nonchalant shrug Vash gives him another one of those blinding Vash-smiles that makes Nick want to dig his thumbs into his own eye sockets.

“I’m, well—that is,” Vash stumbles around his words for a moment, all eyes on him and face steadily flushing under the attention. “I’m from… really really far away. It’s sort of a lot to explain, actually? Oh, I don’t know where to start…”

Meryl and Milly share a cautious glance. Vash looks ready to combust from anxiety—or embarrassment, maybe. He fidgets, stutters through a few half-sentences that leave the girls looking more concerned.

To spare him, Nick blurts out, “He’s an alien. He crashed out there, in the desert.”

Vash meets Nick’s eyes, wide and unsure, and Nick gives him what he hopes is a reassuring smile. Just for something to do, Nick grabs another slice of pizza and hands it to Vash. Hopefully some heavy carbs can calm him down.

Vash is adorably mystified by the melted cheese and dripping grease. Both girls giggle at his antics but they seem to be waiting for something—waiting on Nick.

“What?” Nick grunts.

“What’s the punchline? You should work on your stand up before you quit the pizza place,” Meryl rolls her eyes.

Nick throws his hands up. “I’m being serious!”

Milly eyes Vash where he was gnawing on his slice. His full cheeks reminded Nick of a chipmunk.

“An alien? Like from outer space? Is that like… a real thing?” The taller woman laughs nervously. She crosses her ankles and looks to Meryl again, pizza in her hand forgotten. “Aliens aren’t, like, real right?”

“No way,” Meryl crosses her arms, glaring at Nick over Vash’s head. “Nick’s just fucking with us. It’s his only hobby.”

Vash is watching Nick closely, mouth stuffed full, and Nick shrugs again. Your court, blondie.

Something in Nick’s face must give him confidence, or reassurance. He swallows hard and looks between both women, giving them that patented Vash-smile, “It’s true,” he says, soft. “My brother and I crashed our ship out there. Nick is going to help me find him.”

Vash turns his smile back on Nick and it’s so unnerving to have such genuine sweetness directed at him, in front of an audience no less, that Nick has to look away.

The silence stretches on uncomfortably long.

“Wait,” Meryl eventually mutters. She tosses her pizza back in the box and twists Vash to face her. “Wait wait wait. Did you have something to do with that meteor from a few days ago? That thing shook the whole fucking city.”

Vash grins awkwardly and twists his fingers together against his chest. “That was probably us, actually?”

Meryl just looks at him for a long moment, squinting into Vash’s face. When he begins to squirm under her observant stare, she says, “Prove it.”

“P-prove what?”

“Prove you’re an alien.”

Vash splutters and looks around the room before patting down the pockets of his borrowed clothes as if he might find an ID with “ALIEN” next to his picture. Watching him panic and flail is a bit painful, so Nick reaches around to grasp his chin and gently shake his head around.

“Just look at his dumb face. Grade-A alien,” Nick snickers.

Milly joins in. “Grade-A for alien!”

“I will bite you,” Vash threatens Nick with no real heat behind it.

“How many space diseases will I get?” Nick rattles him around one more time for good measure.

“All of them,” the blond man promises.

“Even space rabies?”

Milly cuts in a second time, managing to redirect their bickering. “If you’re not from here, on Earth—where are you from?”

Vash takes a moment to think and Nick removes his hand to pat his shoulder. Go on.

All three humans are focused on him and Nick can see him squirm again where he sits, still not comfortable with such a rapt audience.

“I’m from x̵̪̮̤̦̩̬̾̓̚͜͝ư̸̡͚͍̗̮̫̤ ̶̳͖̈́a̶̟̎͊̈́̀͝j̵̡̾̄̄͒̈̚͝s̷̰̝̊͒̿ù̷̡̩͍̀ķ̷͈͉̪̫̲͒̋̃̇. I don’t actually think there’s a name for it in any of your languages,” he admits. “It’s a small irregular galaxy with a lot of newer star clusters—it’s a pretty active corner, biologically speaking! We keep in contact with a lot of other species in the nearby systems. It’s… sort of similar to here, but with two suns,” He finishes, sighing miserably like he can still feel the burn of two stars on his skin. “It’s hot as hell. All desert.”

Nick feels frozen, enraptured at the images Vash paints so easily. He’s so intelligent, has seen so much that Nick never even fathomed existed. Nick has never really thought about star clusters or sun types or galaxy shapes. He’s spent his whole life just trying to survive—stargazing can’t keep you safe or pay for your next meal.

He really could just listen to Vash talk for days. It’s an unnerving idea to have reinforced.

“Nerd,” Nick scoffs instead. Vash simply pouts and knocks their knees together.

“You leave him alone,” Meryl chides.

“Thank you,” Vash tells her, giving her a side glance that screams kicked puppy. “He’s so mean to me sometimes.”

“You’re definitely sleeping on the floor,” Nick grumbles.

Meryl shakes her head and drags Vash’s attention away from Nick. “That’s all cool, but it doesn’t prove anything, Vash,” she tells him gently.

Vash chews at his lip again, obviously trying to think. Milly gives him an encouraging smile.

“Well,” he mutters. “There is this.”

He slides his jacket off his shoulders and lets it fall behind him, revealing the intricate prosthetic port and the scarring along his bicep. He holds his arm out delicately and wiggles the metal fingers, making them click together. The room has fallen silent enough for the whirring of the gears to sound shockingly loud. The paladins on the TV call to form Voltron and Vash offers his palm out, face carefully neutral.

“Whoa,” Meryl breathes—she reaches for the arm without hesitation and takes the bright metal hand into her own. Vash seems surprised at her boldness, watching quietly as she turns it this way and that, studying the tendons and joints and ‘ooh’ing at every find.

Milly loops around the couch to Meryl’s other side to join her. She presses a fingertip to the clear-cut section that glows along the outer bicep. Nick sits back and lets them fawn over Vash. “It’s beautiful!”

Vash flushes. “You think so?”

Watching the girls handle Vash’s prosthetic brings a thought crashing back to Nick—or rather, a gripe, “Hey, why don’t you shock them when they touch you?”

The blond leans back to study Nick’s face, thick brows furrowed. “Have you been feeling shocks?”

“Yeah, every time you bump into me like an idiot,” Nick crosses his arms and decides to forgo explaining how sometimes he felt it even when Vash just looked at him. “Are you doing it on purpose?”

“You two don’t feel anything?” Vash asks the two women still pawing at his metal prosthetic with looks of awe. They shake their heads and Vash hums thoughtfully before catching Nick’s eye again. “Maybe you’re just sensitive to it.”

“Sensitive to what?” Nick grumbles.

Vash scratches his nails through the brunette of his undercut. “Technically, me?”

Before Nick can jump on what the fuck that could possibly mean, Milly gently pats Vash’s prosthetic hand and sits back to look into his face. “I believe you, Vash,” she tells him with all the kind-hearted sincerity of Milly Thompson.

Meryl crosses her arms and leans back into the cushions. “Yeah, I guess I do, too. You don’t seem the type to pull a prank like this.”

“But I do?” Nick grumbles at the dig.

“I trust Vash more,” Meryl shrugs.

“You’ve known him a day.”

“You mentioned you’re looking for you brother?” Milly, the resident peacekeeper, diverts.

Vash nods and Nick can tell he’s trying to reign in the emotions that run him down at the mention of Nai. “He disappeared after we crashed. He went to look for help.”

“We’ll help you,” Meryl offers easily. Vash looks mystified at such an offer all over again, just as he had with Nick.

“Really?”

“Of course,” Milly chirps. “You probably miss him terribly—and we can cover way more ground with four people instead of two!”

Vash’s head whips back and forth between the two women. He’s definitely on the verge of tears again. “You guys don’t have to—”

“We want to,” Meryl cuts in, resting a hand on Vash’s shoulder. He seems to sink under her reassurance and Nick’s heart feels oddly full.

“Don’t cry again, you big baby,” he snarks.

Meryl reaches around Vash and his warbling to flick Nick in the face. “Be nice to him!”

The conversation devolves into their usual bickering and Vash relaxes back against Nick’s side like all his worries have melted under their kindness and approval. Nick imagines he was anxious and wired up, maybe even a little terrified, so Nick does his best to keep the rest of the visit light and alien-less: customers the girls had dealt with that night, something funny Roberto had said, tales from Milly’s trip out east to see her family.

As Milly regales them with a story of one of her dozens of cousins trying to front flip off the roof into a pool Nick feels Vash snuggle closer, squirming into his side as if Nick was a damn pillow. He’s close enough for his head to fall on Nick’s shoulder if he leans just right—

“Tired, blondie?”

Vash hums and lets his head rest on the back of the couch. Nick turns to address the girls to avoid staring at the long line of his neck and sharp cut of his flushed cheekbones.

“He hasn’t been feeling well. A… space cold, or something.”

“Travelers sickness,” Vash murmurs. He sounds a million miles away.

“Same thing,” Nick grumbles—pointedly ignores the way Vash rolls his head towards him to give him an irritable, sleepy side-eye.

“I’m sorry we kept you up,” Meryl starts, making to stand.

“We’ll head out,” Milly adds on—but Nick waves them off. It’s well past 1am and it doesn’t sit right with him to kick them out at this hour.

“Stay, get some sleep. Blondie can have my bed and I’ll take the floor. There’s room for everyone.”

“Ugh, thank god,” Meryl falls backwards onto the couch and stretches her arms above her head. “I didn’t want to drive. I’m exhausted.”

Nick digs out more spare blankets while Meryl and Milly get ready for bed. Having the girls over was nothing new, they’ve had many a movie night with Nick and Livio over the years, but it felt strange finding them arranged around the living room with Vash between them, yawning between giggles as Meryl dramatically acts out some story—probably something embarrassing from Nick’s late teen years, if he was a betting man.

Nick dumps the pillows and blankets directly on Meryl’s head. She squeaks and struggles to clamber out, needing Milly to come to her rescue as Nick helps Vash onto his feet. He’s unsteady with exhaustion, eyes half-closed already as Nick shuffles him along.

“Wake me up if you need anything,” Nick reminds them.

“I’ll bang the pots and pans,” Meryl promises.

In Nick’s room Vash sits on the edge of Nick’s bed and watches his host shuffle through the closet. With some soft sleep pants and another shirt in hand he returns to Vash’s side. The man is practically dozing upright, hands folded in his lap. It’s sort of endearing.

Nick nudges his shoulder, “Blondie?”

“Your friends are nice,” is the dreamy response he gets.

“They are,” Nick agrees, grateful Vash is too out of it to notice his own smile. “Do you want to grab a shower?”

Vash shakes his head. His blond hair flops back and forth. “Too tired.”

“Figures,” Nick snorts. He sets the fresh clothes on Vash’s knees. “Well, I’m going to grab a shower. Here are some clothes to sleep in. Don’t fall and brain yourself while I’m gone.”

Vash’s head tips upward to meet Nick’s gaze. The wound that had extended up his temple is gone but he looks drawn and exhausted in a way Nick finds himself familiar with.

“You don’t have to.”

The statement startles Nick—he had been thinking about Vash’s brother, imagining another man with the same sunshine smile and gentle eyes and wondering where he might be now, how they would find him. “Don’t have to what?”

“Sleep on the floor,” Vash tells him, voice sheepish and tiny as he curls both hands in the clothing Nick had given him. He looks pathetic. Nick is burdened to realize that it does something for him the same way watching him work or argue with Nicholas or wax poetic about space travel did.

Nick swallows and forces himself towards the door. He’s not running he’s being responsible. “We can talk about that when I get back,” he says. Promises.

The shower never gets quite hot enough to make Nick relax. He keeps thinking of Vash, perched on the edge of his bed, inviting him in. The lilt of his voice, the way he buried his fingers in Nick’s folded clothing.

There’s no way he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Nick thinks grumpily, pushing his hair back from his eyes and wallowing in anguish.

It was going to drive him insane. Vash was going to drive him insane.

What was more annoying was Nick was enjoying the drive.

He liked Vash pushing his buttons and bumping him with his scrawny elbows. He liked seeing him be fascinated by the most mundane things that Nick never thought twice about. He liked when Vash turned that brilliant smile on him, or lit up when Nick walked in the room. And knowing he had Vash’s trust, on top of everything else, made his heart act up.

Alright, so he had a fucking crush. Whatever. It wasn’t the end of the world. He could play it cool till they solved the crises of the walking typhoon of a man in his bed.

He stands under the spray, contemplating the morality of rubbing one out in the shower for his own sanity.

Ultimately, he decides against it. Knowing Vash was on the other side of the wall, lonely and sick and vulnerable, it curdled whatever illicit thoughts wanted to take root. Vash didn’t need someone jerking off to thoughts of him: he needed a friend, a place to feel safe. He needed to find his brother. It felt wrong.

When Nick returns Vash is under the covers, curled up on his side and looking pitiful. Nick doesn’t miss that he left enough room in the bed for a second person. Vash lifts his head enough to greet Nick, then pats the space next to him—pouting.

Is he actually pouting? Little shit.

“You really wanna share?” Nick towels his hair off for a second time to hide the way his face warms at the notion—then heats further at Vash’s enthusiastic nod.

How stupid. He’s shared beds with Meryl and Milly and Livio. Even once with Marianne when they’d all gotten a little too drunk for Elizabeth’s birthday last year. This is no different.

Nick must hesitate a second too long because Vash looks up from under the fan of his lashes and offers, “My kind—we’re… tactile. It’s weird being all alone,” he admits. “But you don’t have to, really! Whatever you want to do is fine!”

He’s lonely, Nick, you ass.

Nick pulls back the covers and carefully climbs in next to Vash. Every shift and dip between them makes Nick feel twitchy. He really needs a cigarette.

“Whatever. Just don’t kick me in your sleep or I’ll put you out on the porch.”

Nick settles with his back to Vash because the idea of having to look into the shock-blue of his eyes and that doofy fucking smile before he falls asleep feels so much worse.

“Thank you, Nick,” Vash murmurs—then Nick feels him roll away, facing the wall. They say nothing else and after an awkward moment, Nick reaches out to turn off the bedside lamp.

The room falls dark and Nick hears Vash sigh, content. Eventually, he falls asleep to the shallow breaths of the man next to him.

When Nick wakes, the room is still dark with only slivers of moonlight peeking from behind Nick’s curtains. The clock next to his bedside informs him he had barely been asleep for an hour. He glances around the dark, staring at vaguely familiar shapes as his eyes adjust, and wonders what woke him.

There’s a shuffle across the room, the sound of fabric and breathing, and suddenly Nick is looking into a pair of bright blue eyes aglow in the dark somewhere near where he thinks his closet door sits.

“Jesus, blondie, that better be you,” he groans and rubs at his eyes, the scruff on his chin. The creature looming in the dark makes a despondent noise.

“Are you awake?” Vash whispers.

Nick splutters, “Well, yeah, shit, I am now. Why the hell are you sitting down there in the dark?”

He hears Vash shuffle around again, the click of something plastic, and then he murmurs, “I couldn’t sleep.”

Nick sits up and blindly slaps at his bedside table till he can flip his lamp on—the sudden light takes a moment to adjust to and Nick eventually finds Vash sitting on his floor, back to his closet door, and Nick’s Walkman in his hands. Vash idly clicks the tape compartment open and closed.

“Have you been awake this whole time?” Nick asks. Vash makes that sad trilling sound again.

“I can’t sleep. I keep worrying about Nai,” he admits.

Nick feels his irritation slough off him like a heavy rain. Vash was terrified for his brother, and carrying planetary-sized guilt, and battling his space cold on top of it. Poor guy must be miserable.

Nick shakes off the last bit of sleep clinging to his brain and makes a decision.

“Wanna go for a ride?”

That catches the alien’s attention. He perks up, curious eyes finding Nick again. When he doesn’t immediately shoot the offer down Nick swings himself out of bed.

“C’mon, space cadet. Get dressed.”

Vash sits up and sets the empty Walkman aside, watching as Nick grabs a pair of jeans and socks. “Where are we going?”

“You’ll see. Just trust me.”

Nick steps out to give Vash some privacy. Milly and Meryl are out cold, snuggled up to share the sparse room of the couch, with infomercials running in the background. Nick waits for Vash to emerge from the bedroom before he grabs his boots and keys, gesturing Vash along behind him onto the porch.

Outside they lace up their shoes and Nick directs Vash to the tarp-covered shape sitting on the driveway by Meryl’s truck—and if he maybe reveals his bike with a little more flourish than usual, well, Vash will be none the wiser.

“This is my bike, Angelina,” Nick tells him, grinning wide as he throws one leg over his beloved motorcycle. The engine grumbles to life under him and he meets Vash’s terrified stare with a grin.

He pats the seat behind him and waits for Vash, who has clearly never been on a motorcycle before: he approaches it like one would a wild animal, stepping gingerly over the metal and leather and hovering.

Nick straps him into the helmet he digs out of the storage compartment and drags Vash forward by his hands, pulling him flush to Nick’s back. Vash squeaks and yelps at the rough treatment, arms instinctively winding around Nick’s middle for balance and locking him in place. Nick can feel him hide his face between Nick’s shoulder blades and it makes him laugh.

“Hold on, alright?” Nick pats Vash’s hands where they sit against Nick’s stomach. He feels the blond nod against him, and then he backs them out onto the street to head east.

The roads are mostly empty at the odd hour and the sky is a sickly grey-blue till they hit city limits and enter the Brise: here the horizon is a wide stretch of the deep, velvet blue Nick loves, star-bright and cool with the moon still looming.

Nick feels Vash tip his head back to look at the sky as they speed down the barren desert road—wishes he could turn to watch him, see the way his eyes light up. Nick hopes he’s smiling.

There is an outcrop of tall red cliffs to the northeast that Nick has always retreated to on bad days or when he started to feel overwhelmed. He’s always loved the view from the edge, the sprawl of the desert and the easy curve of the horizon laid out to remind him how small his problems really were.

It’s not the most comfortable place, rocky and dusty like everything else in this shitty place, but Nick thinks it’s worth it for the way Vash gasps as Nick cuts the engine and leads him to where the view stretches out infinitely.

“I didn’t realize you could see so much out here,” Vash whispers. He twirls on the spot, eyes fixed on the stars, and Nick feels himself smile before he can stop it.

“The city has too much smog to really see anything, but I’ve always liked coming out here to clear my head. Thought you might enjoy it too, space cadet.”

Vash stops to face Nick and gives him another one of those smiles that makes Nick feel like he might crumple. He’s dazzling in the cool light. “Thank you, Nick.”

“Don’t mention it.” Vash raises his eyebrows, maybe unsure of the phrase or just sizing up Nick’s humor. “Seriously, don’t tell anyone. Livio would never let me live it down.”

Vash’s laugh is demure but genuine. It makes Nick feel warm and tingly—so he avoids unpacking that by leading Vash to sit cliffside in the dusty red earth.

As they settle to sit in the grit of sand, barely a foot between them, Nick quietly tells him, “You don’t need to worry yourself sick, blondie. First thing in the morning we’ll head out to look for your brother. I have a few ideas of where he might have ended up. I just know he’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”

Vash sways where he sits, their shoulders knocking, and he looks a little more at ease as Nick gently bumps him back—an easy push and pull, the two of them syncing without thought. “I trust you.”

“And, honestly, if you think you’re getting rid of Milly or Meryl now that they know, you’re an idiot,” Nick laughs.

“I get that sense, yeah. They seem incredibly kind. I feel really lucky.”

“Plus, Meryl’s going to uni in the fall to become a journalist. She’s good people but she’s nosy as hell. She’ll have Nai tied up in the back of her truck by noon.”

Vash does laugh at that and the sound makes Nick quietly preen. The silence that follows is easy, gentle. Nick wonders if his words did truly ease some of Vash’s deeper worries.

Nick gestures up at the sky after a stretch of time, “Do you know any of our constellations?”

“Some. I used to read everything about Earth I could get my hands on,” Vash hums and leans back on his hands. “Apa, Draco, Heracles. The Cat’s Eye Nebula is there but you can’t see it from your planet,” he points, drawing Nick in to follow his line of sight. The movement brings their heads together, cheeks almost brushing.

There’s static on his skin and his heart feels so loud, but Nick doesn’t move away. Vash doesn’t either.

“Are you missing it?”

Vash doesn’t answer immediately. The cooling desert air sits between them and as the moment grows heavy Nick regrets asking.

“In a way,” Vash eventually whispers, turning his head to meet Nick’s gaze. They’re so close Nick can feel his heat, his breath. Nick doesn’t think he’ll ever get over the way Vash eyes glow, how they cut to the heart of him so easily. “I love being a researcher. I love my home, my family, and I want my brother back more than anything. But it can be… lonely.”

“But you get to travel across galaxies, meet all kinds of people.”

“It’s not really like that.” Vash shrinks away, wrapping his arms around his knees.

“What’s it really like, then?”

When Vash speaks his tone is sad, aching. “As a researcher I don’t get to interact, that’s diplomatic work. It could skew any data we collect. I’m always just watching from afar, taking notes, writing reports. And I spent so much time focusing on the academy, on my training, that I never really got to experience the things I feel like everyone else does. Our… mom was protective of us. Most of my life has really been her, my brother, and my studies. In a way, it’s been fun being with you and your friends.”

“Oh, I got it,” Nick chirps, swaying to bump his shoulder. “You were a homeschool kid.”

Vash’s smile is tentative but visible. Nick’s only goal accomplished. “I don’t understand what you just said but considering its you, I’ll bet it wasn’t a compliment.”

Nick scoffs, offended. “What? I compliment you all the time. That’s just your head injury talking.”

“You tend to insult me more, I think,” Vash hums thoughtfully.

“Alright, fine,” Nick huffs and shuffles himself around to face the blond head-on. Vash is watching him, trying to hide the quirk of his lips behind the high collar of Nick’s red jacket, and it makes Nick feel bold. “I’ll give you a compliment right now.”

He stares at Vash’s face, probably far too long, entranced by the sweep of his lashes and the point of his beauty mark beneath his wide eyes. Vash quirks one dark eyebrow at him as he waits.

“Your eyes are… very unique,” he eventually settles on—a statement paling pathetically compared to Nick’s internal crisis.

Vash seems unconvinced, squinting said unique eyes as he sizes up Nick’s squirming. Maybe it didn’t translate well, or maybe Vash is just fucking with him.

“Pretty,” Nick amends—feels his own smile start with the way Vash’s pretty eyes widen, his shoulders hitch with a breath. His smile turns bashful and he looks away. It makes Nick feel giddy.

“The mole under your eye is cute, you have a very nice smile—”

“Wow, only shallow compliments, huh? Is that the kind of man you are?” Vash grumbles, acting put-off. But Nick doesn’t miss the flush crawling up his neck and the way he shifts on the sand. Even the dark can’t hide how he starts to fluster under Nick’s attention.

“Of course not,” Nick begins, leaning into the dramatics just for the way Vash stares. “You’re funny, and scarily smart, and clumsy—”

“That last one is not a compliment, even I know that!”

“Sure it is, blondie,” Nick shrugs. “You’re cute when you’re clumsy. And by the way, it’s bad Earth custom to not return a compliment,” Nick pouts.

Vash eyes him, skeptical, but shifts to sit knee-to-knee with Nick, no barriers left between the two of them. “Alright. You’re mouthy, and kind of mean like a grumpy old man, and you snore when you sleep—”

Nick laughs in disbelief. He wonders if Vash will ever cease to surprise him. “How is any of that a compliment? And I do not snore!”

“You do!” Vash argues, pouting. “And you didn’t let me finish! You’re grumpy and you snore and you also spent the last two days feeding me, taking care of me, and being incredibly patient with… well, everything. You patched me up and gave me a place to sleep and promised to help find my brother without hesitation. You act like a grumpy old man but you’re incredibly kind and I’m so glad it was you who found me, Nick.”

Nick sits, frozen, staring at Vash—the soft smile he’s giving Nick, the way the moonlight paints all of him as bright as his eyes. Nick sits, barely breathing, and swears he can feel the blood in his veins, the pounding of his heart, every stretch in his body as he leans forward—

And Vash meets him halfway, a little off centre but warm and soft and inviting with the way he presses his mouth to Nick’s and sighs through his nose like he was delighted in the way they meld together so easily. The jump of static between them is so sharp it nearly burns. It snaps down Nick’s spine and makes his erratic heartbeat shudder. Nick presses closer.

Some part of Nick is scared to touch him, this gentle and kind and brilliant being, until Vash’s prosthetic rests on Nick’s knee and runs his thumb along the inseam: a completely innocent gesture, Nick knows. Just Vash seeking out touch, connection.

Nick runs one hand through Vash’s hair to smooth it back from his forehead, the other tracing the sharp edge of his chin—gentle, chaste. Two things Nick has never associated with a kiss. But he thinks of Vash’s sad eyes, his soft words, and wants to treat him with all the kindness the world can offer.

Vash is the first to break away—he leans back just enough to break the kiss and Nick tries to not let the soft sound of their mouths parting get to him, but he knows he shivers regardless.

When he opens his eyes, Vash is grinning, looking quite pleased with himself.

He’s also glowing.

Small, intricate lines curving over his cheeks and forehead and chin, branching out like the limbs of a tree, all lit brighter than the moon. They disappear under his collar and into the gold of his hair. He seems lit up from within, as if his body can’t contain it.

He’s beautiful.

Vash’s pleased grin turns a little bashful, a little unsure, “What?” he laughs—then looks down at where their hands rest and finally notices the trailing pattern over his flesh hand as well.

He panics, flailing and trying to cover his face with his hands, one glowing and the other gleaming blue. He groans something about embarrassment and awful luck, curling in on himself as if he might roll away like a weed on the dunes, and Nick reaches out to hold his wrists and steady him.

“I’m so sorry—” Vash wails.

“It’s beautiful,” Nick whispers, voice cracking a little. He feels like his heart is in his throat but he can’t bear the thought of Vash thinking Nick sees these parts of him, the alien parts, as anything less than beautiful. They’re strange and so, so lovely.

Vash lowers his hands and lets Nick just hold them in the space between their bodies. Feeling bold, Nick carefully lifts a hand to trace the bright markings—up over the high plane of his cheek and disappearing into his temple. Over the shell of his ear. Between his worried brows. Under the full curve of his lip.

“What are they?” Nick asks. Rests his hand along Vash’s cheek, feeling the ever-present jolt between their skin. Sensitive, Nick vaguely remembers from only hours before.

“My p̵̛̩͎̃̏̓̇l̵̢̅̉̌̽ ̸͈̥͙̊̒̉̓͐a̵̬̱̅̕ǹ̶̖t̸̛̲̞̳̃̓͘ ̸̠̭̃̆ͅg̶̡̺̙̿̽͠g̷̙̟̑͌-̷̨̙͊ͅ-̶͈̩̑̍ͅt̸̢̞̉ͅ markings. They’re visible sometimes when I’m…”

When Vash hesitates to finish, Nick fills in, “I’m guessing either happy or horny here, given the context, blondie.”

“Happy!” Vash cuts in, prettily pink even under his markings. “They show up when I’m really happy, sometimes, or when I make contact with another p̵̛̩͎̃̏̓̇l̵̢̅̉̌̽ ̸͈̥͙̊̒̉̓͐a̵̬̱̅̕ǹ̶̖t̸̛̲̞̳̃̓͘ ̸̠̭̃̆ͅg̶̡̺̙̿̽͠g̷̙̟̑͌-̷̨̙͊ͅ-̶͈̩̑̍ͅt̸̢̞̉ͅ. I’m usually better at controlling it.”

Nick lets Vash maneuver their hands to cradle them in his lap, fingers interlocked and fidgeting as he speaks. It feels ridiculous that this catches him by surprise more than the actual kiss, but Vash tends to make him a little stupid, he thinks.

“What is that word you keep using? It’s not translating. You used it earlier, said you and your brother came from the same… something.”

“Oh,” Vash deflates a little. “p̵̛̩͎̃̏̓̇l̵̢̅̉̌̽ ̸͈̥͙̊̒̉̓͐a̵̬̱̅̕ǹ̶̖t̸̛̲̞̳̃̓͘ ̸̠̭̃̆ͅg̶̡̺̙̿̽͠g̷̙̟̑͌-̷̨̙͊ͅ-̶͈̩̑̍ͅt̸̢̞̉ͅ ? I should have figured there wouldn’t be an equivalent in your language. We’re sort of considered a second species on my planet, in a way. Like, human adjacent but not really? I guess even by my homes’ standards I’m kind of weird,” Vash giggles.

Nick shakes his head and feels stupidly fond. “Nothing weird about you, blondie. Well, you’re a bit weird, sure, but it’s the good kind of weird. Keeps things interesting.”

Vash fake gasps. “A compliment, wow!” He giggles again, ducking out of reach as Nick makes a grab for his dumb, spikey blond head.

“I’m never complimenting you again. You’re so ungrateful.”

“Oh yeah?” Vash grins.

“Yeah, I’ll just do this instead,” Nick curls a free hand into the collar of his red jacket and pulls Vash forward, giggles and all.

Vash laughs into the kiss this time, making Nick laugh as well—it’s silly and dumb and Vash practically melts against him as they share breath and laughter. It’s perfect.

“Let’s go home,” Vash murmurs against his mouth, eyes fluttering open. “I’m sleepy.”

He lets Nick lead him back to the bike, tripping over stones and shifting sand and needing Nick to hold him upright. By the third stumble Nick asks if it’s all a ruse to feel him up. The taller man just grins guiltily.

Vash snuggles down against Nick’s back for the ride home and for probably the first time in Nick’s entire life, he drives the speed limit.

At home, Meryl and Milly are still asleep on the couch while some alien creature in a suit is convincing a kid in an arcade to drink soda on TV. Milly mumbles something and rolls over Meryl’s leg as the door squeaks shut behind Nick—he and his own alien companion share a sheepish look before tip toeing to Nick’s room down the hall.

They dress down quickly, back-to-back, and Vash falls into bed first with a relieved sigh. The tense line of his spine has relaxed, eyes closed and hands tucked under the pillows. When Nick takes too long dallying, staring at Vash’s peaceful face, the blond’s eyes pop open to catch him.

“What are you staring at?” he laughs—but Nick can hear the self-conscious tone just underneath. Still nervous in this strange place with a strange man, kiss or not.

“The dorkiest man in the universe,” Nick grunts as he pulls a sleep shirt over his head. “Good thing it looks good on you.”

“Shut up and go to bed,” Vash groans—turns his head away, but Nick can still see the tips of his ears burn pink.

“Of course,” Nick gives a deep, sweeping bow that makes Vash laugh a second time before he flops down next to him. It was too hot to burrow under the covers. Daylight would break soon and the heat of the desert would creep in before too long.

“Good night,” Vash murmurs, eyes fluttering closed and smile soft.

Nick sneaks one hand under the pillows to seek out Vash’s prosthetic, pressing his palm to the chill metal and interlocking their fingers: a gentle reminder, he hopes. I’m right here.

“Night, blondie.”

Nick spends some time watching Vash’s sleeping face: every twitch behind his eyelids or furrow of his brows, the gentle swell of his shoulders as his breathing slows and deepens. He’s lovely, sweet-faced, and Nick is suddenly hit with the thought of oh fucking god we kissed. I kissed him.

When the giddy anxiety in his gut settles, he’s out within minutes.

Chapter 5: halfway to madness

Chapter Text

Nick wakes the next morning sprawled on his back. There's a heavy weight laid out across his left side, anchoring him, and the unfamiliar buzz of a snore nearby. He idly wonders if that’s what drew him out of his foggy dreams of sun-bright mazes and blue stars.

A quick peek tells him that Vash has pillowed his head against Nick’s right shoulder to snore almost directly in his ear. What a brat.

Nicholas takes a moment to stare while the otherworldly man is unaware: there is no trace of the beautiful alien patterns across his skin in the weak morning light. His complexion is the sallow grey of illness. The furrow between his thick brows has smoothed to almost nonexistence as he rests, and Nick presses a finger to the divot left behind. Vash feels strangely chill against Nick’s own hot-blooded body.

It’s barely daybreak outside his curtains but Nick groggily remembers the night before: Vash’s tears and restlessness, the way he clung to Nick’s back as they flew down the highway. He’s dizzyingly filled with an urgency that drags him to full wakefulness.

There’s a sharp knock at Nick’s bedroom door and Vash buries his face deeper into Nick’s skin. “Are you guys up?” Meryl calls. “We should get a move on soon.”

Nick couldn’t agree more—but fuck, he was comfortable.

“Give us a few minutes,” Nick groans. He thinks he hears Meryl call him an “old man” through the door, and maybe a fake retching sound or two followed by both girl’s giggles.

He gently shifts the shoulder Vash has commandeered. It jostles the alien snuffling gently into Nick’s neck enough to earn him a whimper. It’s the soft sound of dream-dampened tears and it spears Nick straight through.

“Hey blondie.” The other man mutters unintelligibly against the heat of Nick’s skin but otherwise doesn’t budge. “We need to get up,” Nick whispers.

Vash yawns deeply, the breath ghosting over Nick’s neck and setting a chill down his spine. As the blond’s mouth hinges wide Nick spies Vash’s canines, a flash in the dark pink of his mouth: longer and more delicately pointed than a humans’. More lethal.

He could rip my throat out with those.

The thought does something unbearable to Nick’s still-groggy brain: it’s the shocking heat of a threat, of glancing your skin along a knife’s edge, or pressing deep into the kaleidoscope of a bruise.

Vash finally cracks his eyes open and the crystalline blue immediately meets Nick’s watchful eye —they’re bright and sharp and dilate at the sudden light. They remind Nick of a hunter, creatures in the woods. An apex predator.

And then the blond man smiles in a way that Nick is – too quickly— becoming familiar with and the effect dissipates.

“Good morning,” Nick grumbles. Vash sighs lightly against him, groggy and saccharine.

“Good morning,” he breathes.

The knocking comes a second time. Milly’s cheerful voice comes from behind the cheap wood. “Hurry up you nerd! That’s what Meryl told me to tell you.”

“Ready to get a move on?” Nick asks quietly. Vash’s face shutters off, expression steeled into something sharper as he stares up at Nick. Something calculated and tense. It hurts to watch the shift—to reconcile Vash’s sweet and playful attitude with the worry etched into him now.

Vash nods.

Nick clambers out from under his alien companion and onto his feet, offering a hand to the other man. The tension in Vash’s strong shoulders and between his dark brows softens ever so slightly as he slides his cooler hand into Nick’s calloused grip.

Nick takes the opportunity to show off a little and haul him from the bed onto his feet in one smooth movement—not a simple feat, with Vash’s solid frame and dense metal prosthetic. The movement of it leaves the alien looking disoriented where he sways. He stares, wide-eyed, at Nick’s cock-sure grin.

“Oh,” he squeaks. Nick can feel himself preen. He doesn’t think he’d be able to pull that off a second time.

“Get it together, spikey,” Nick laughs and tosses some fresh clothes into Vash’s idle hands.

In the living room the girls are both awake and dressed. Livio is home, sitting on the recliner and telling the girls some story as Meryl sips a mug of something steaming and Milly carefully unbraids her hair.

“— three cop cars down Central. It was nuts. Traffic was blocked for like twenty minutes,” Nick hears Livio huffing as they emerge.

With Livio going to the factory early Nick had thought they would pass each other entirely before Nick woke, but Livio is still in his uniform and thick-soled work boots, work bag at his feet. He looks exhausted and peeved.

Nick rounds the couch to join them, Vash hovering just behind. “What’s going on?”

“Fucking Central was backed up with cop cars this morning. Looks like they were detaining someone over at the hospital. I couldn’t get close enough to see anything but it took forever. Plus, all the stop lights were fucked because a transformer short-circuited or something. You could see sparks down the street and feel the static. It was gnarly.”

“I hope everyone is okay,” Milly murmurs as Meryl hands Vash a matching mug where he’s tucked to Nick’s side.

Meryl takes a swig from her own drink and makes a disappointed hum. “This city’s nuts. I’m not surprised there was practically a SWAT team over there at 4am.”

“Oh shit,” Vash yelps—nearly drops the mug in his hands as he flails, but Milly makes a quick save and dances out of the way.

Nick dodges the blond’s wayward noodle arms that almost catch him in the face and elbows him. “Jesus, needle-noggin!”

“No wa-a-a-y,” Vash groans, looking distraught.

“Do you think it could be your brother?” Meryl takes a dainty sip, watching in amusement as Vash gently bumps Nick’s shoulder only to get whacked on the back in return.

“It would be stupid to go to the hospital,” Vash protests, but it sounds weak even to Nick. “Any sort of test would show that we weren’t human. He wouldn’t—”

“You really don’t think he would go if he thought you were dying?” Meryl asks, dry but not unkind.

Vash sighs heavily at whatever thought passes through his spikey blond head. He looks equal parts irritable and stressed. “Dammit, Nai,” he mumbles. “You always overreact.”

Meryl quickly drains what’s left of her own mug and sets it aside. “Well, at least if it is him it would cut out the guess-work. Better than driving around for three hours doing a Man-On-The-Street-Bit: have you seen this alien?” She snickers.

“What?” Livio shifts forward to the edge of his seat. “The hell are you all talking about?”

Milly turns her wide blue eyes to Nick, practically sparkling. “Are we about to do a crime?”

“Why would you be about to commit a crime?” Livio squawks.

“You can stay here with Liv if you want—last thing I want is to get either of you in trouble,” Nick offers. It was still stupidly early but from the sound of things they were already behind the curve. The sooner they got to Nai, the better.

“Oh, I’m not worried! I just want to be prepared,” Milly chirps. They all take a moment to split up and prepare to tackle their next conundrum: how to break an alien out of a hospital.

Nick grabs his keys and cigs from the front table and Meryl grabs her boots by the door. Vash takes the mugs back to the kitchen, looking somewhat ill.

Livio jumps to join them, sputtering, as they convene in the front room to leave. “What is going on?”

“Oh,” Meryl hooks a thumb over her shoulder towards where Vash is clinging to Nick’s arm, looking whiny and distressed. Nick decides to ignore it and just lets the blond nervously rattle him around.

“Vash is an alien that crashed his spaceship out in the desert a couple days ago and we need to go break his alien brother out of the hospital. Nick is also probably fucking an alien—”

“I am not—”

Meryl gives Nick a withering side-eye. “Do you really think I didn’t hear you two sneak out last night?”

Everyone turns to look at the pair of them and Nick feels his ears burn. Vash seems to have found a sense of shame as he uses Nick for cover to avoid their accusing stares.

“I knew it—” Livio starts, lighting up.

“We don’t have time for this!” Nick snaps. He drags Vash towards the door and the girls are quick to follow. The urgency of finding Nai was a decent enough distraction to avoid this terribly unwanted conversation, but Nick knew better. Livio and Meryl would drag it back up at the first sign of weakness. He would have to deal with it sooner or later.

For now, he chooses to run.

Milly shuts the door on Livio yelling something about cops while Meryl unlocks her truck. “Do we have time for breakfast?”

“No!”

»--•--«

The truck idles noisily in the drive-thru with the rest of the early crowd. Milly tinkers with the radio spewing mostly static and Meryl taps her fingers on the steering wheel as Vash rattles off questions about the donut menu.

Nick silently finds it endearing and opts to stare out the window, feigning indifference as he listens to the blond man prattle.

After Vash’s fourth question—about glaze of all things—Meryl turns in her seat to ask, “Do you not have donuts on your planet?”

“We do, they’re just rare. We don’t have nearly the variations you do.”

Nick stares at Vash over his sunglasses. “The fuck does that mean?”

“Our desert climate isn’t ideal for growing saccharum officinarum or other graminaceous variants,” Vash shrugs. “We have to grow most of our food stock in facilities that mimic the right conditions, and growing sugar isn’t really a priority.”

Nick has an intrusive thought of Vash sprawled warm and pliant across his lap, whispering science facts into his ear while Nick fingered him halfway to madness. The sheer absurdity at the fact that he finds Vash’s geekier qualities a very attractive plus makes him smack his forehead against the window next to him.

Fucking chill, he silently begs himself.

“Man, imagine a life with a donut shortage,” Meryl sighs, turning to share a conspiratorial smile with Vash—then jumps, lowering her sunglasses instead. “Oh, Jesus.”

Milly leaves the radio on a staticky Specimen track and turns, “What’s wrong, Mer?”

“I don’t think I’ve seen your eyes in broad daylight, Vash,” she laughs nervously. “If we’re really trying to hide the whole ‘alien’ thing we’re gonna have to hide your face better.”

“What’s wrong with my face!” Vash pouts, looking entirely put-out, and Nick can’t stop himself from bursting into laughter. He really was a cute thing, Nick thinks, feeling warm.

Milly reaches back to pat Vash’s knee placatingly.

“Your eyes are just unique,” she tells him.

Vash gives Nick a side-eye. “Nick said that too,” he grumbles, suspicious. Nick just grins.

“Do I have another pair of sunglasses in here?” Meryl taps open the compartment above the rear-view mirror to find it empty before reaching across Milly to check the glove compartment. “Damn.”

“I lost a pair in here forever ago,” Milly chirps as she begins to check the cup holders. “And you never clean your truck, so they should definitely still be in here somewhere!”

“Thank you, Mills,” Meryl grumbles.

Vash turns to Nick with crocodile tears and a wobbling lower lip. The unshed tears make his eyes glitter a jewel-blue Nick doesn’t think he could ever find the proper name for. “Are my eyes really that weird?”

“We didn’t say weird!” Meryl protests from where she’s twisted to reach beneath her seat.

“It’s what you all mean,” Vash fake-sniffles.

“They’re just hella blue, blondie. No one on Earth has eyes like yours,” Nick simpers. Vash continues pouting but the tips of his ears begin to turn pink at the subtle praise and he grumbles something just low enough that Nick can’t catch it.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” Vash trills, smile dangerously saccharine.

“Ah-ha!” Milly whips around and brandishes a pair of round orange shades in thin silver frames. Nick is pretty sure Milly had bought them for a 60s themed party one of Elizabeth’s coworkers had thrown months ago and then drunkenly left them behind on the ride home. They were an atrocity in Nick’s humble opinion.

Milly reaches back to carefully place them on Vash’s nose. The blond uses his gloved hand to settle the frames more comfortably on his nose before peering shyly at each of them, waiting for a verdict.

The large orange lenses easily counteract his unnaturally blue eyes and dim them to something less startling. The shape is almost too big for his face but it just adds a hint of charm that Nick is embarrassingly drawn to—regardless, Nick finds himself wishing the glasses weren’t between them when their eyes meet.

“They suit you, blondie,” Nick tells him instead. Vash carefully touches the frames and leans against Nick’s side to check himself out in the rear-view mirror.

“You think so?” he asks timidly.

“Very pretty, Mr. Vash,” Milly tells him sincerely.

“Oh,” Vash groans, despairing, “Please don’t call me mister—I’m only a hundred and twenty. You’re going to give me a mid-life crisis.”

All three of them pause, staring at Vash in varying degrees of disbelief. The blond quickly catches onto the strange vibe and slides his new shades down his nose to peer back at them, oblivious.

“What?”

“A hundred and twenty?” Meryl squeaks.

Milly eyes Vash thoughtfully. “Can aliens have mid-life crises?”

“How the hell are you a hundred and twenty?” Meryl continues. She looks Vash up and down like he might disintegrate from old age right there on her backseat.

Nick would be lying if he said it didn’t give him some pause: Vash barely looks old enough to even drink by human standards. There was a glowing, almost childish, air to him that made Nick assume they were relatively similar in that aspect at least.

Vash whips his head between the three of them. “What do you mean? Humans live to a hundred,” he says.

“Rarely,” Nick snorts.

“And you said only,” Meryl points out.

Vash presses the tips of his fingers together, wiggling them nervously under their attention. “My species has a pretty long lifespan, I guess,” he admits. “I’m still an adolescent by p̵̛̩͎̃̏̓̇l̵̢̅̉̌̽ ̸͈̥͙̊̒̉̓͐a̵̬̱̅̕ǹ̶̖t̸̛̲̞̳̃̓͘ ̸̠̭̃̆ͅg̶̡̺̙̿̽͠g̷̙̟̑͌-̷̨̙͊ͅ-̶͈̩̑̍ͅt̸̢̞̉ͅ standards.”

“Aw, you’re a baby!” Meryl coos. She reaches back to pinch his pink cheek and he bears it with some mild grumbling.

“Our little alien baby,” Milly chimes in.

Nick reaches to pinch Vash’s other cheek and aid Meryl in shaking his pretty blond head back and forth. “Our big alien baby,” Nick snickers.

“You’re so mean to me!” Vash whines.

They inch their way up the drive-thru line till it’s their turn to pull up to the window. The tired worker cranks the glass open and hands Meryl a box almost too large for her to fit through the truck window.

“Why the hell did you get so many?” Nick asks as Meryl haphazardly hands the box off to him.

“Vash is a growing boy,” she sniffs.

“Alien,” Nick corrects as he pops the lid for Vash to peruse the assortment.

“Alien boy,” Milly tacks on helpfully. She twists around to grab herself a cruller, and she and Vash seem equally sated for the drive.

Nick for once decides to shut his mouth: free food is free food, after all, and Nick had a sinking feeling the day could only go downhill from here.

The hospital was a rough slab of a cement building with a fading paint job and even more faded signage above the main and emergency entrances. It was relatively unchanged from just a few nights prior except for the addition of three police cars parked up on the curb and the two stop lights closest to the premise blinking from some glitch in the transformer down the street, currently swarmed by the electrical company.

The traffic is a bit congested but they make it through relatively unscathed when Vash is about three donuts deep.

“Something you should know,” Vash starts around a mouthful of a Boston creme, sounding reluctant, as Meryl parks the truck in the half-full lot. “Nai is the… combative type.”

“Explain,” Nick deadpans, already sighing. Nothing can be simple with this guy, can it?

“He’s just a… throw-punches-now, ask-questions-never kind of guy.”

“What a gift,” Nick snorts—and finally starts to wonder just how different these brothers were, how likely this man would be to start a fight or draw attention. Especially considering the damage he already seems to have done.

They essentially had no plan for how to find the guy or get him out, and on top of it he might cause a scene. Exactly the last fucking thing they needed while sneaking around with a set of alien twins from deep space.

Meryl cuts the engine and turns to face the boys in the backseat. “We’ll need a contingency plan,” she says, always the voice of reason. “Someone should stay behind in the truck in case we have to… leave.” She cringes. “Quickly.”

“Run from the cops, you mean,” Milly says.

“Well, yeah,” She casts a look through the back window to where the cop cars are parked. “Do you think he’s being detained? It sounds like something already went down this morning. They could have taken him to the station.”

“If he’s injured they’d keep him here for now,” Nick points out. Crazy-fast-alien-healing aside, they have no way of knowing just how banged up Nai was from the crash. And having three units still on scene when the culprit was downtown didn’t feel likely.

“Do we just… go in and ask someone?” Vash asks.

Milly hums in thought for a second, “I don’t think we should bring attention to ourselves.”

Meryl nods along. “Milly’s right—if he’s been violent and they’ve had to call the cops, they’re going to be suspicious of what we’re doing there. Best if we split up to cover the floors. It can’t be that hard to find Vash’s evil twin brother,” she grins.

“Rock-paper-scissors for getaway driver?” Nick suggests.

They all throw out a quick round and Vash comes in last with some scissor-rock hybrid. He stares back blankly before cheerfully telling them, “I don’t know how to drive.”

“I’ll do it,” Milly offers, taking the keys from Meryl.

“We’ll make this as quick as we can,” Nick promises. “Just idle the truck and keep an eye on the doors.”

“At least if you do get caught, Meryl has been to jail before!” Milly reminds them.

“Okay, first of all, it wasn’t jail, it was holding. They’re two entirely different things. And it was one time, for the sake of journalistic integrity. Now let’s go.”

The three exit the truck and cross the lot towards the entrance, trying to appear as calm and normal as possible. Vash’s expression is perfectly neutral, but his gloved prosthetic fingers dig into Nick’s bicep where he clings. They’re close enough that Nick can hear Vash taking careful, measured breaths.

Meryl bravely enters first and gestures for the boys to hurry up.

The lobby is a nervous flurry of energy: people sit sprawled in the waiting area in varying degrees of agitation and exhaustion. Nurses dart in and out from the emergency area and the elevators to the upper floors. There’s an air of anxiety. Everyone looks on edge. Nick can taste irritable static on the back of his tongue.

“He’s here,” Vash murmurs to them. “I can feel it.”

Meryl leads them to the bank of elevators with the air of someone who knew where they were going and where they belonged. Nick gives what he hopes to be a friendly nod to the staff behind the lobby desk when they glance their way, but they seem a bit preoccupied talking amongst themselves.

The elevator doors slide shut and Meryl releases a tense breath as she looks at the little map on the mirrored elevator wall. “Alright, there’s three floors above the ER—we can split up to do a quick walk-through but I think one of us should stay with Vash.”

“Why can’t I go alone?”

“Because you’re a literal alien. Also, you’re accident prone.”

Vash squawks but before he can argue Nick chimes in, “Agreed. I’ll stay with him.”

“Of course you will,” Meryl’s mouth quirks at the corners.

Nick rolls his eyes and refuses to humor her. Vash is silent but Nick thinks he looks a little warm in the face. Or maybe he’s projecting. Who fucking knows.

Meryl steps off the elevator at the second floor and gives them a short salute. Just before the doors shut she makes a lewd gesture that Vash seems to miss, engrossed in studying the panel of buttons.

Nick flips her off and tries to look anywhere other than the blonde.

“Any chance your weird alien senses can tell us where exactly your brother is?”

“It doesn’t really work like a tracking system,” Vash pouts, “I can feel that he’s here, and that he’s been putting off a lot of energy, but I’m not a dog,” he sniffs.

“They have dogs on your planet?”

Vash looks offended, “We’re extraterrestrial, not monsters, Nick.”

The elevator opens to a couple of worn-looking hospital staff in plain scrubs pushing covered carts. One man has a bruised jaw and a woman behind him irritably clicks a pen light. “—why downstairs couldn’t take him,” she’s saying to the others.

Vash and Nick shuffle off the lift to give the workers room for their equipment. Nick tries his best to not look like he’s listening in as he grabs Vash’s arm, slowing their exit while the staff shuffle past them onto the elevator.

“You know why,” another woman snaps.

“The cops should have just taken him. We don’t get paid enough for this shit,” the man pushing the cart grumbles.

The elevator doors slide shut. Vash side-eyes Nick as they begin to calmly meander down one of the halls. “Well, sounds like we picked the right floor,” Vash murmurs.

“Sounds like your brother’s done a number on ‘em.”

The blond sighs through his nose. He looks both exasperated and amused. “Yeah, that sounds like Nai.”

The rest of the staff on the floor seem to be having an equally bad day. Passing conversations are tense and clipped, multiple scrubbed and white-coated employees hanging around the nurses’ station, whispering and shaking their heads. The air tastes metallic behind Nick’s teeth.

Vash glances in rooms as they pass—each time he finds a random human stranger his shoulders seem to hike higher. “Where are we? Do you know where we’re going?”

“Easy, blondie,” Nick tucks his arm to Vash’s inner elbow and draws him back to his side. “The layout is basically just a giant square. We won’t miss him if he’s here.”

The hallway turns to the left and as they round the bend, Nick spots two uniformed police officers posted outside one of the rooms about three down. The two men are speaking quietly to one another, heads bent together. There’s another cart of what seems to be medical equipment, none of which Nick can name, next to them.

Nick grabs Vash’s arm and stops him short before the officers can spot them.

“Wanna make a bet?” Nick grins.

“That has to be his room,” Vash whispers, sounding like he’s had the wind knocked out of him. He presses more solidly against Nick’s side. “How can we get to him? What are they doing to him?”

Nick spins Vash to look at him and the blond trills pathetically. “If your brother is anything like you, I’m sure he’s just fine. Let’s get Meryl and make a plan.”

They catch Meryl at the elevators and manage to duck into the family bathroom to share their intel. Meryl chews the inside of her cheek as she watches Vash, looking vaguely annoyed.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble,” he tells them, forlorn.

“Don’t be,” she grins toothily. “This is kind of fun.”

“Yeah, we’re having a great time over here. But you know they’re not going to let us just sign him out and roll him home,” Nick points out.

Vash glances up at him, “You can’t just tell them you need to take your alien for a walk?”

Meryl barks a laugh that surprises even her. “There’s that sense of humor,” she pats him on the head. “Now, we could just do this the old-fashioned way,” she suggests, looking between the two men.

Vash lifts his head, “Which is… what?”

She shrugs, looking far too delighted at the situation, “Create a diversion and a run?”

“Couldn’t we just ask nicely?” Vash whines.

“I don’t think that’s gonna fly here, bud,” Meryl tells him with another sympathetic ruffle to his spikey blond head.

“Alright, but what are you going to use as a diversion? You’re not going to do anything unsafe, are you?” Vash pouts, accusatory.

“Well—”

“Meryl, if anything happens to either of you, I’ll cry. Do you want me to cry?” He threatens. Meryl just flicks him on the nose.

“You’re almost as dramatic as Nick.” She rolls her eyes. “Just stay here a few minutes after I leave, then go wait in the west wing where they can’t see you. I’ll meet you there."

“Are we not going to go over a plan or something—” Vash stutters out. Meryl waves him off.

“No time! Just trust me,” she winks.

Meryl slips out the door and disappears. Vash looks tense, eyes far away, and Nick takes the opportunity to clap the blond on the shoulder. He’s warm and solid under Nick’s palm, and he lingers there, a little entranced as Vash gazes up at him.

“You can trust Meryl,” Nick promises.

“I know—I mean, I do,” Vash murmurs. He smiles, soft and open. “I trust both of you.”

Nick claps him on the back a second time, nearly knocking him off the seat and sending him scrambling to catch his balance. “Good, ‘cause today is gonna be rough.”

They spend a few more minutes dallying in the poorly-lit bathroom—Vash squawking about how Nick was so mean to him—before they follow Meryl’s instructions and exit to loop around towards the west wing of the floor.

The other half of the floor is much the same: patients young and old staring out from rooms behind half-drawn curtains and over-worked employees shuffling about, paying Nick and Vash no mind beyond a polite smile or dead stare. One older woman in brightly decorated scrubs stares a little too long as they pass and Nick does his best to reign in the dread that settles low in his stomach.

The boys take up post where the west wing connects to the north and east, Nai’s guarded room in view. The two officers are talking quietly to a white-coated doctor. The cart of equipment is gone.

Vash immediately begins fidgeting. First with his glove, then a loose thread in his black shirt, then a loose thread in Nick’s shirt.

“Blondie,” Nick grabs Vash’s hand where he had been looping the tiny thread around his bare pinky finger in dizzying circles. Vash lets him hold his hand, hidden between their two bodies. Neither pull away.

“What’s taking Meryl so long?” Vash pouts, equal parts petulance and worry.

“Breathe. Give her a moment.”

One of the officers cracks up at something the other said and the noise makes them both jump and turn on instinct—in time to see Meryl approaching from the opposite hall with a giant white donut box and a cheeky grin.

“Morning!” she greets them—the doctor has disappeared into one of the rooms, leaving the three of them. Meryl pops the box open as she stops in front of them. “City service appreciation—Riton wants to make sure you know we’re so grateful for all you do!”

“Ach,” Nick scoffs. “That’s her reporter voice—she likes to do it to annoy me. She’ll be awesome on the news someday,” he laughs.

The officers say something Nick can’t catch before meeting Meryl half-way down the hall, backs turned on Nai’s door. They’re only a handful of paces away but Nick knows that might be the only margin they get.

“And there’s our diversion. Let’s go.”

Vash keeps his hand tightly wrapped around Nick’s, letting Nicholas pull him around the corner at a pace just shy of suspicious. By some luck or fate the hallway is otherwise empty so there’s no one to call them out for the way they speed walk down the sanitized tile and cram themselves into Nai’s shut hospital room while his keepers stand blissfully unaware a mere twenty feet away.

Vash drops Nick’s hand so quickly he almost feels disoriented at the shift—at least until he tastes the air, the static clogging the back of his throat, and the sensation nearly makes him retch.

Vash kneels next to the only hospital bed in the room, occupied by a tall, blond man nearly longer than the bed. He has Vash’s striking features but his tone is pale and sickly, as if he had been drained of colour and sun.

He seems deeply asleep but his brow is furrowed, his face splotchy with wounds in various levels of healing marring what of his upper body is visible under his hospital gown and blanket.

“Oh Nai,” Vash whispers. Then, a little louder, “Nai. We can’t stay here.”

Even with Nick’s limited knowledge of what passes for healthcare in his home, he knows that Nai’s hospital room isn’t the standard. It’s crowded with machines beeping and ticking, tracking things Nick can’t name across dozens of little screens and graphs. A cart of vials sits opposite Nai’s bed in what little space is still open. Most are empty, but some contain clear liquids with strange viscosity. Others are clearly capped with blood.

“We need to go,” Nick whispers, eyes stuck on one monitor larger than the others. A neat little graph of just how slow Nai’s heart rate was—near nonexistent. “Will he be alright?” Watching the flat green lines makes Nick want to reconsider. It felt like too disastrous a risk.

Vash follows Nick’s gaze. “He’ll be fine, that’s normal. For us.” He sends Nai a fond but frustrated glance. “He’s just dramatic.”

“If you’re sure—”

“I am,” Vash tells him, firm, still staring at his brother. “We need a way to move him.”

“Bin?”

“Who?” Vash looks at Nick over his shoulder.

“No, you dork, a bin,” Nick clarifies, crossing the room to fetch the large trash bin. The only things inside the liner were some bandages spotted with the rust-red of dried blood and some paper trash, so Nick removes the entire thing and dumps the liner in the corner before rolling it over to Nai’s bedside.

Vash looks like he’s trying to hold back a laugh at his brother’s misfortune. “I’m not disagreeing, but if he wakes up in a trash bin I’m never going to hear the end of it.”

“It’s trash can or alien guinea pig,” Nick shrugs.

“Grab his legs.”

Vash begins to deftly remove his heavy inventory of electrodes and IVs, and Nick rushes to unplug the monitors before they can start screaming at the void input.

“We gotta move fast,” Nick whispers. He’s almost surprised at how easily they work around one another, matching pace and movement as they rush in the cramped space. Together they get a solid hold on all four of Nai’s limbs to lift him off the bed—the fucker was way heavier than he looked. What the hell did they eat on their planet?

There’s a burst of laughter outside the door and Vash nearly drops Nai on his head as they shuffle sideways to the bin. They pause, holding Nai carefully between them and staring down into the container.

“How—?” Vash starts.

“Fold him like a taco,” Nick suggests.

“What’s a taco?”

More voices, Meryl’s mixed with others not too far away, and Nick starts to panic. “Just toss him in, we gotta go, blondie.”

Nai ends up in a u-shaped heap at the bottom of the bin, head lolling onto his shoulder. That isn’t going to feel good later, Nick cringes before tossing the liner on top of him to hide his tuft of white-blond hair.

“We’re just taking out trash, no crimes here. Who’s gonna stop to chat with someone pushing a huge bin of trash?” Nick rambles, wiping one hand on his dark jeans as they make for the door.

“Are you freaking out?”

“No just—just get the damn door.”

Vash catches Nick’s eye, the two breathing deep together, before Vash inches the door open, peeking out before gesturing him on. Nick pushes forward into the fluorescent light of the hallway.

Meryl is barely a room-length away, leaning against an empty gurney, waving dramatically as she regales the two uniformed men with a story that Nick was sure was embellished shit she had seen on Ripley’s Believe It or Not.

Nick almost felt sorry for them, but god bless Meryl Stryfe and her uncanny ability to bullshit her way through anything.

Vash and Nick leave the way they came, heading for the west wing. The old wheels sound so fucking loud on the tile Nick is sure everyone is staring as they pass. Nick puts all his energy into keeping his head up and his expression exasperatedly plain even as he knows someone had to have caught on to the dead monitors left in Nai’s room by now. He keeps his back to the nurses’ station as they wait at the elevator, and he’s sure he catches Vash sighing in relief as it chimes to signal its arrival.

A fresh-faced student in paw-print scrubs steps off and Nick nods at her shy smile—thankfully she keeps walking.

“Just got to get through the lobby,” Nick murmurs. He might have pressed the button for the first level a little too hard. Just as the doors begin to shut a woman ducks inside, making the doors jolt back open again.

“Thanks,” she sighs as she turns her back to them and watches the doors close. “I need to get the hell out of here for a minute.”

“Crazy day?” Vash laughs, and she casts a half-look at him over her shoulder. Nick wants to jam his elbow into his ribs.

“Yeah, it’s always something,” she grumbles.

As she reaches up to adjust her long red ponytail Nick catches the clear bin liner shift out of the corner of his eye. He hopes the grind of the lift is enough to mask the rustle and quickly slaps the section of thin plastic back into place as gracefully as he can manage.

A soft groan follows Nick’s attempt to keep Nai down—and Vash quickly clears his throat around a rough bout of fake coughing.

“Excuse me,” Vash smiles. It’s the bright one, fake but brilliant, and something in Nick feels envious as the woman turns to eye him.

“I work in a hospital,” she shrugs. “If I gave you three guesses how many times I’ve been spit on this week alone I’m sure the number would make you gag.”

“I worked with children, it’s pretty similar,” Vash offers, and her chilly expression cracks a little.

The elevator chimes and shudders to a stop. Nick isn’t sure if the bag shifts again or if it’s paranoia taking root, but he tips the bin slightly to keep it from the nurses’ sharp eye in case she turns further to check Vash out.

Nick suddenly realizes he’s gritting his teeth. It’s because you’re worried about getting caught and arrested, idiot, he argues with himself.

The redhead laughs and turns back to the door, “Kids are always sticky for some reason. Little germ vehicles.”

“They’re talented at that,” Vash agrees.

The three exit the elevator and Nick does his best to stay behind the woman, in a perfect blind spot. The woman doesn’t seem to notice, only addressing Vash. “Careful out there with your bacteria brigade—I’m pretty sure every time I’ve been sick the last two years has been because of a toddler with an agenda.”

“Will do,” Vash chuckles as the woman splits off towards the check-in. The front doors can’t come fast enough. “When people spit, make sure to try to dodge.”

“Well shit, didn’t think of that. Thanks.” She makes to leave but seems struck with a thought before turning and staring Nick down where he panics a half-pace behind Vash. “You’re the new guy, right?” She points between the trash bin and Nick himself, dressed down in plain black clothing.

“Mm?” Nick shifts, tilts his head, going for nonchalance.

“Make sure you check the labs downstairs, too. Night shift never gets the biohazard boxes for pick-up.”

“Sure thing.”

Vash drifts closer and Nick can read it as panic in his own right. This woman is watching too closely. The blond turns that blinding smile back on the nurse still eyeing Nick—her nametag reads ‘Amelia’. Nick isn’t fond of the way she zeroes in on the trash bin.

“I’ll bring him right back,” Vash promises her. She finally waves and takes her leave.

They stroll out the front entrance and down the uneven pavement towards where Meryl’s truck sits parked. Nick barely restrains himself from gasping in the (somewhat) fresh air.

There’s a groan and something muttered from beneath the liner again, and Nick has half a mind to smack Nai upside his head.

“I think he’s waking up,” Vash frets.

Nick leans down to hiss, “Hey Nai, you don’t know me, but I’m really gonna need you to shut the fuck up right now.”

“Wazzit?” Nai starts to reach one clumsy hand out towards Vash’s voice and Nick is fast to slap it back down. Vash pulls the liner back over the gap and they pick up the pace.

Vash spends most of the trek cursing in sharp little chirps Nick’s human ears can’t decipher but it makes him laugh regardless, bumping elbows and sharing half-looks as they run.

Some part of Nick’s brain that sounds suspiciously like Meryl keeps prodding, who all would you have gone to all this trouble for?

As they near the truck Nick hears the engine turn and rumble to life. Milly peeks out the driver’s side window, “You made it! Where’s Meryl?”

“She should be here soon,” Nick reassures her.

Milly hops out of the truck to join them, looking incredibly confused at their procurement of a janitorial trash can. “What’s in there?”

“My brother,” Vash says, barely smothering a giggle.

“In the trash can?” Milly blinks.

“Yeah, let’s just—not tell him this part. You know, later.”

Vash opens the back door and the three huddle around the bin. When Nick rips back the liner Nai is awake like they had feared—or at least some semblance of it. He looks groggy and beat to hell, his apple-green eyes glassy as he glares up from his pretzeled position.

“Vass,” he whines.

“For the love of m̵͍̑̀̓̃͝͝Ì̷̛̛̥͎̰͉̼̜̩̫̼̝̲̮̏̆̉́͂͠k̸̨̡̩̠̮̝̮͕͎̖̭̄͛̄̇͐͛̏͑͗̚e̷̛̻̰̽̓͊̐̆͋̂̄́̐̒̆͋͠L̶̛̛͖̰̲͉̭͉͈̬̓̍̆͆̀̃̎̿͘L̴͔̗̺͖͎̓̏̍̇͗͐͋̌͊͌̅̕͝,” Vash mumbles as he fights Nai’s noodle-arms to get a grip under him and begin hoisting his dead weight. “And you don’t tell mom about any of this.”

Nick goes for Nai’s legs as Vash starts to drag him into the cab of the truck but it’s like trying to grab a handful of Jello. He’s completely uncooperative or making angry little chirps as the two try to man-handle him into the truck. Nick thinks Nai might have hissed at him at one point.

“They’ve got him drugged up to his eyeballs right now. He’s probably fucking smelling colours,” Nick says.

“Drugged up on what?”

The boys get Nai sprawled across the backseat, loose-limbed and mumbling at the cab roof. He seems to be going in and out of consciousness but determined to let everyone know his thoughts on these turn of events.

“Probably just morphine,” Nick shakes his head, fighting Nai back to take some space on the seat bench. Nick settles Nai’s legs in his lap as Vash carefully arranges Nai’s bruised blond head in his own. One of Nai’s legs thump to the floor as he shifts.

“Our species doesn’t handle CNS or H1-Inhibitors well. The reactions aren’t great.” Vash carefully lifts one of his brother’s eyelids to check his pupils. Whatever he sees makes him frown. “It might take him a while to come out of this.”

Nick nods along, “Yeah, Livio had the same thing happen once at Marianne’s.”

Milly carefully shuts their doors for them before climbing back into the passenger seat. “Meryl’s coming.”

They rearrange themselves for a potential swarm of cops to descend on the car but the only one who appears is Meryl, her old ID from her journalism internship swinging around her neck as she hops into the driver seat. She looks frazzled but like she was thoroughly enjoying the rush. Nick supposes Meryl has always been a bit of a thrill seeker.

She roughly throws the truck in drive and twists to begin backing out. “We gotta go-o-o!” She nervously sings.

“Did they see anything?” Nick asks.

“Dunno, but they were paging people to the third floor so, let’s just worry about that later and get the hell out of here for now!”

“Heavily agreed!” Vash yelps and braces Nai’s head as Meryl pulls a tight turn on her way out of the lot.

The city is coming alive with morning commuters and the nine-to-five crowd, the traffic increasing just shy of busy as Meryl takes them across town as inconspicuously as possible while hauling ass. Every red light and Chevy Caprice sets Nick’s teeth on edge.

“So, this is your brother?” Milly asks kindly, turning to where Vash is staring at Nai muttering in his lap. Vash gives them a weak smile.

“This is Nai.”

“It’s very nice to meet you, Mr. Nai,” Milly tells him.

Nai grumbles something back, the words the flowing cursive of drunken English, but even then all Nick can catch is something about an ‘anio’.

Vash gives his twin an amused eyeroll. His joy was nearly palpable. “He’s talking about his piano.”

“Oh god I think I saw a cop,” Meryl squeaks. Nick catches her eye in the rearview mirror and grins.

“What are you so skittish for? You’ve been to jail before.”

The damned Toyota in front of them finally turns off and Meryl hits the gas hard enough to throw them all forward. “It was one time!”

Most of the drive home is spent with Milly playing mediator between Nick’s teasing and Meryl’s temper. Vash is near tears at their antics, watching them with a smile that crinkles his eyes behind his glasses. Nick finds himself unable to look at him too long—it makes him run too hot, makes him feel too confused.

Nai has lulled back into a medical sleep against Vash’s knees. The bruising across Nai’s lily-white face already looks shades lighter than in the hospital.

They make it home without fanfare or a charge and Meryl is the first to stumble from the truck. She leans against its faded paintjob and gasps dramatically as Milly pats her shoulder. “God,” the little journalist huffs. “That was fun.”

“You’re insane,” Nick tells her without any bite.

The four of them carefully shuffle Nai out from the truck, arguing over his head about direction and angles and whether the concept of left was relative or not. Nai remains completely lost to the world. Even when they stumble and knock Nai’s head against the doorjamb.

“Don’t tell him that part either,” Nick whispers to Vash. The blond chokes on a snort.

Livio meets them inside. “Another stray?” he asks, amused. Then seems to catch the stark bruises and lacerations slowly healing over Nai’s body and gasps. “Woah, what happened?”

“This,” Nick grunts as the four unceremoniously dump Nai on the unmade couch. “Is Vash’s brother.”

All Livio offers is a, “huh”—arms crossed and looking thoroughly confused. Nick, well-versed, catches the moment Livio begins clicking pieces into place. “The other guy on the ship with him?”

Nick nods but sees Vash take a little steadying breath—then closes his mouth to let Vash take over.

“He came here with me and saved me during the crash, but then he disappeared. They all helped me find him,” Vash tells Nick’s brother, giving the other three a look so fond Nick sees even the girls blush.

“Of course we were going to help you,” Meryl waves him off, but her face looks hot to the touch.

Milly gives him an equally soft smile. “We’re just happy you’re both okay, Vash.”

“Is he okay?” Livio asks, leaning down to peer into Nai’s face.

Nai makes an irritated little grumble in his sleep and clumsily kicks his leg in Livio’s direction. Vash jumps to grab his brother and laughs awkwardly. Nick almost loses it at Livio’s horrified look.

“He’s a sweetheart once he knows you!” Vash hurriedly promises. Livio carefully leans away. “And he’s already healing pretty well, he just needs to rest.”

“Better sleep with a knife,” Meryl snickers.

“I swear he’s not that bad!” Vash whines.

As Vash tries to convince the others that his brother isn’t likely to murder them as they sleep, Nick steps back to watch the chaos and stretch out the tension in his neck. His shoulders pop and his spine feels made of mortar, and all his exhaustion hits him then. Everything compounds till Nick swears he could drop right there.

“While you all do whatever it is you’re doing,” Nick tells them as Vash begins checking Nai’s pupils again while Milly sits on Nai’s legs. “I’m going the fuck to sleep.”

Meryl glances at him from where she perches on the back of the couch. “Don’t you have work tonight?”

Nick pauses. The days since Vash’s arrival have blended together like an abstract art piece. He’d forgotten he even had a normal life outside of Vash’s spaceship and fancy tech and weird twin brother.

“Oh,” he murmurs eloquently. “Fuck that.”

“You’re gonna get fired,” Meryl chirps.

Nick scoffs, rubbing at the back of his neck. Every fiber of his being has agreed that nothing in that moment matters more than getting some goddamn sleep. “I’ll call later. It’ll be fine.”

“You look like shit,” Livio tells him helpfully. “Go lay down. I’ll help them get settled.”

“You’re a real one,” Nick tells him, flicking his brother on the forehead as he goes.

Nick disappears into his room to strip down to his boxers and flop face down on the bed. The sheets are cool enough to feel like a godsend and the blinds are still drawn to keep the room enticingly dim.

He flips around to face the ceiling and knows by the way his body relaxes into the old mattress that he’ll be out in minutes.

Before he completely succumbs, he hears his door crack open and finds Vash there, peering in. He knows on some evolutionary level he should find his pale face and sky-blue eyes peeking out from the shadows alarming, but in his pre-sleep haze Nick wants to just fold him up and stuff him in his pocket.

“Are you asleep?” Vash whispers, and Nick snorts embarrassingly as he laughs.

“Obviously. What’s up?”

Vash comes further into the room and the door quietly clicks shut behind him. The blond rocks nervously on his heels, seemingly unable to decide whether to hold his hands behind his back or against his stomach as he fidgets. He starts and stops a few sentences, most of it anxious gibberish, before he sighs and visibly gives up.

Within the span of a heartbeat, he crosses the room and climbs onto the bed, throwing one leg over Nick’s hips to seat himself squarely in his lap, and then pitches forward. Nick reaches out on instinct to grab him by the soft give of his waist and steady him, but it doesn’t deter Vash from his target: he falls easily, elbows to either side of Nick’s head, and dips lower to catch Nick’s mouth with his own.

It’s entirely different from the night previous—they had been distracting one another, finding a place to hide from the guilt while the world continued to turn.

But now Vash takes him like a man possessed, guiding Nick’s mouth open to press his tongue inside. Vash still tastes sweet like the donuts he had scarfed down in the truck, like powdered sugar and cream, and Nick groans at the heat of him.

Vash pulls back just far enough to dig his sharp little teeth into Nick’s bottom lip and pull— and it makes Nick dig his fingers into Vash’s waist, the fat of his thighs, the mess of blond hair falling into their faces. He pets Vash’s cheek, his neck, and feels his little alien heart flutter under his calloused fingers.

Nick plants his feet to give Vash a proper seat, though not the one he would truly like to give him, and Vash uses the leverage to rut down against where Nick is already embarrassingly half-hard in his boxers. The blond pulls back and the sound he feeds into Nick’s panting mouth is low and animal. A beg to be satisfied, a need without the eloquence of language.

“Wound up, blondie?” Nick grins, better fitting his hands to Vash’s waist to drag him down against his hips. Vash lets out a surprised little groan and Nick sees his eyes flash, his fangs peeking around his smile, before he ducks to mouth at the tendon of Nick’s neck.

“Ah,” Nick groans, letting his head fall back to the pillow as Vash works his way down. “Very wound up.”

“I wanted to thank you properly,” Vash whispers. His breath fans over Nick’s neck and makes him shake, but the words take root and Nick pulls back to look at him properly.

“Are you doing this because you think you have to?”

Vash scoffs and leans back to shed his borrowed red jacket. Even then, unsure, Nick finds the other man to be an otherworldly sight. All lean lines and bright eyes in the gloom of the bedroom.

“I’m here because I’ve thought about this since the first morning,” the blond confesses—and even around the shy lilt of his voice there’s something heated and inviting, something raw, that Nick desperately wants to dig his teeth into.

“Come here,” Nick tells him, twisting his fingers into the long golden hair and drinking in the pathetic whimper it earns him. Vash goes easily, pressing the long line of his body to Nick’s and fitting his hands to Nick’s bare chest, running the ridge of his thumbnail against his nipples and down the angle of his ribs. The duality of his gently warm skin and the shock of cold alien metal makes Nick feel like he’s spiraling.

Nick wants to get his mouth on him. He wants to be inside him. He wants to make him cry and beg and sing. He wants too many things at once and having all the options laid out before him is overwhelming. His head spins.

Nick slides his hands beneath the hem of the dark shirt Vash wears. “Off.”

Vash looks far too happy to comply, twisting away just enough to tear the fabric overhead—and get it caught somewhere between his earring and the tangle of his hair.

“Nick,” Vash whines, and Nick laughs so hard it bounces Vash where he still sits perched on Nick’s hips.

“You dork,” Nick tells him. Even he can hear how disgustingly fond he sounds and chooses to circumvent it by unraveling the shirt and tossing the offending fabric aside.

Vash has quite a few scars: some so faded Nick doesn’t recognize them till his fingertips skim over the old tissue, some pink and newly healed. Nick finds him a marvel: a patchwork of stories from another world entirely, a man with a life well lived. A hundred and twenty years of it.

One of Nick’s hands is caught in cold, teal metal and Nick looks up in time to catch Vash quickly glancing away. “You don’t need to—”

“Shut up.”

Nick shifts up just enough to put his mouth to Vash’s skin without unseating him. It’s the salt and tang of a man, sweat and heat and something that makes Nick’s mouth water as the traces scar tissue with his tongue, new and old alike, feeling out the edges and dips and sharp angles and listening to Vash sigh above him.

He nips along his chest, the curve of his pec, and feels a sharp spike of arousal spear through him at the strangled chirp Vash makes when Nick sinks his teeth into a nipple and pulls.

“You’re a tease,” the blond huffs as he twines his fingers into Nick’s dark hair.

“Oh?” He breathes. Feels Vash shudder. “In a hurry?”

Nick tilts his head back to catch Vash’s eyes, and the alien hovering above him begins to stutter. “No, I mean, I—”

“No, no. I definitely don’t want to hold you up,” Nick laughs as Vash continues to splutter, red-faced. Nick reaches down to release the button and zipper of his jeans and gives a quick slap to his ass. “Get these off.”

Nick didn’t think it was possible for Vash to turn redder, face nearly glowing as bright as his eyes while Vash lifts his hips to peel the jeans off and toss them aside. He’s left in a pair of plain boxers, hilariously matching Nick’s, and settles back against Nick’s hard cock—making him groan at the friction.

Vash looks a little pleased with that.

Nick isn’t one to let such a thing slide. “Come back down here,” Nick groans, taking Vash’s mouth again. The taste and feel of him are intoxicating. It makes Nick feel lightheaded and giddy and stupid.

Nick drags one hand slowly down the front of Vash’s boxers—further, till he feels the wetness seeping through the fabric, can run his fingers along the pool of it and Vash groans.

“I think—ahh –I think I might be different than humans,” Vash starts, but it doesn’t deter him from rocking down against Nick’s fingers. Chasing the press of them.

Nick grins, “It don’t matter to me, blondie.”

Nick presses harder to feel the ridge of Vash’s body, hot and dripping as Nick uses the friction of the fabric between them to drive Vash forward—give him little sighs and pants. The air in the room feels blistering.

“Can I?” Nick dips his fingertips beneath his waistband and Vash nods, eyes shining. Nick shifts to sit up against his headboard so he can properly fit his hand to Vash’s body: the soft down of hair, the seam of his body drooling as Nick runs his finger along the heat of it.

Vash’s fingers tighten on Nick’s shoulders and the brunet gasps, wishes Vash would bite him again. “You are a tease,” Vash accuses.

In retaliation, Nick presses his middle finger into his cunt and watches him choke.

He’s hot and slick in a way that is distinctly inhuman, all encompassing and maddening. His body forms ridges and grooves within the soft give of him and when Nick presses against a particularly spongey spot that seems to be surrounded by small filament, Vash curses and presses his forehead to Nick’s shoulder. His nails leave deep red lines down the slope of his neck and arms.

“Oh, Nick,” Vash gasps—and Nicholas feels like he’s been gutted.

He pulls out to fit two fingers, the stretch surprisingly tight, and search out that soft give once more. He knows he finds it by the way Vash thrashes where Nick grips him. He bares down on Nick’s fingers, cunt pulsing around him, and begins to ride him in shallow little thrusts. The strange little stalks along his inner walls brush against Nick’s hand, inviting and curious at Nick's intrusion.

Vash squeezes his eyes shut and whimpers as Nick presses into that single spot again and again—just to hear the sound of him, to watch his body tense and shudder around the feeling.

“Look at you,” Nick coos, equally lost. “So pretty. Such a good boy for me.”

Vash moans, sounding winded, before ducking his head and sinking his teeth into Nick’s neck, this time unbarred as he gets lost in the sensation. Nick is sure he’s bleeding. He had been willing to bet that Vash would respond well to praise but he hadn't anticipated for the other man to writhe so beautifully. He's such a sight that Nick feels himself drip in his boxers.

Nick groans and moves his free hand from Vash’s waist to his hair again, anchoring him there as Nick speeds up the hand working inside Vash—three fingers now, and Vash wails.

“So good,” Nick tells him. Kisses around the sensitive shell of his ear and along his sweat-slick temple. Vash moans where he’s still canine-deep in Nick’s neck and the sound reverberates down to his bones. Nick’s almost convinced he can come like this alone.

The sound of Vash’s body is wet and lewd. Nick digs his fingers into that spot again, slick dripping down his wrist as Vash rolls his hips down into the motion.

The blonde starts cursing into Nick’s shoulder, sharp little words in that flowing language that Vash’s fancy tech can’t translate.

“Gonna come for me?” Nick asks—a hint of cruelty as he sinks his teeth into Vash’s blood-hot ear. Vash nods frantically and lets out a broken, harsh whine. “Go on then, pretty thing. Let me see you,” Nick begs.

Vash twists and bares down, crying out, cunt pulsing as wetness gushes down Nick’s arm and soaks them both. Nick fingers him through it, fucking his fingers against that spot till the other man starts to twitch from oversensitivity—and then a little more, just to hear him whine as his hips stutter.

Nick presses a kiss to Vash’s sweaty hair. “Good,” he tells him gently. “Good. I’ve been thinking about that,” Nick confesses—feels Vash shudder in his arms.

Vash reaches down to where Nick strains against his boxers but Nick catches his arm, keeping him close. The other man glances up, brows furrowed and eyes glassy.

Nick thinks he would really like to make him cry.

“Shouldn’t I…?” Vash trails off, and Nick takes a moment to look at him: pink-faced, teary eyed, hair turned typhoon from Nick’s wandering hands.

Ah, he adores him.

“This isn’t a transaction,” Nick tells him. “I wanted to get you off. Now, I want to nap.”

Vash gazes at him for a moment, expression unreadable, then seems to notice Nick’s other hand shiny and dripping with his own come. He turns impossibly redder. “At least let me clean you up.”

In a moment of boldness Nick runs his tongue from his inner elbow to the tip of his middle finger, gathering up the clear wetness on his tongue—he flashes it to Vash for a second, watches his eyes widen, then swallows it down.

The flavour is something Nick couldn’t describe. Heady with tang and sweetness. Painfully enticing. Nick wonders at perhaps flipping Vash then and there so he could eat him out thoroughly.

Then Vash covers his flushed face and wilts to the bed with an embarrassed groan.

“You taste pretty good, blondie,” Nick tells him, nonchalant. Another pained groan—this one makes Nick laugh. He takes pity on the other man and gathers him into his arms, fitting him to his chest. The pressure of the embrace seems to accomplish something and Vash blooms like a flower, cuddling into Nick in a way that makes the brunet nearly melt.

“Quit worrying,” Nick tells him instead. It comes across a little gruff but Vash doesn’t seem to mind. He sighs against Nick’s skin, sinking into his hold, and Nick feels Vash’s eyes flutter closed.

Nick contentedly watches the other man sink into sleep before he finally follows.

Chapter 6: Author's Note/Update (It's Okay, I Promise!)

Chapter Text

Just a note for now:

Sorry to anyone that followed me on twitter - I really enjoyed seeing other people's works and art and getting to chat with you guys sometimes, but I sort of reached my limit. Seeing people being rude and hurtful and calling names over something I love so dearly really had me wondering if I wanted to involve myself anymore. I started just associating my own fanwork, Trigun specifically, with those things and it started to sour it for me. A lot. The idea of even trying to write made me wanna cry lol

But I don't wanna release my gnarled little fingers from a series I've been so deeply in love with for the last year because some people are mean. Trigun is such a beautiful work with intricate characters and relationships and ideologies and I want to keep exploring all that as a fan. This shit is supposed to be fun.

So I haven't abandoned this (I know it's been a minute) but I think I'm required to watch Trigun Stampede for the 6th time to help myself fall in love with it again, and then jump back into writing this and all my silly little one-offs I have saved in my notes because this is supposed to be fun.

TL;DR: i don't use twitter anymore but I really fucking love Trigun and I'm sorry I let other people make me take my own fun too seriously and almost abandon it. Your regularly scheduled alien/plant shenanigans will continue shortly.

I'll delete this soon when the actual 6th chapter is complete. Love and peace! ;D